


Sidebars

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [13]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Drug Dealing, Gen, Identity Reveal, Impersonation, M/M, Multi, Secret Identity, Summer, Team Bonding, Team Red, Team as Family, Weddings, as in temperature, exclusitory behavior, heat - Freeform, heat waves, idk friends we're just playing around and seeing what happens, kind of, wade has never been so canadian someone help him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 66,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “You’re dead,” the guy in the gutter called after him. “DEAD.”Yeah, yeah. Whatever, motherfucker. Do your worst. Peter had a rug to make.(Peter's got a handful of incomprehensibly stupid perps, a Canadian melting on his couch, and a wedding to attend during this goddamn heat wave.)





	1. you don't even go here

**Author's Note:**

> right it's been storming for the last two days, I'm ready for some fucking sun already. Let's generate this vitamin D.
> 
> this is just a fun little guy batting around my head atm. Nothing very serious. Just trying to eventually get myself to write Matt's wedding. 
> 
> References to stalking-ish behavior below. Please do what you need to to take care of yourselves. Also references to Moana, the disney movie.

Peter had acquired a frame. And a hammer. And two packs of tiny nails. He’d spent twenty minutes humming and hawing over different types of yarn and scuffling around awkwardly from aisle to aisle, excusing himself around the three little grandmas and one gal around his age doing a similar yarn dance.

Eventually, a sales associate for the craft store took pity on him and came to pleasantly ask what project he was working on and thank god and Jesus for her.

“Okay, so. My aunt is turning fifty,” he said with his hands in front of him. “She is a flagrant hippie. I am going to make her a rug. But I have never woven anything in my life.”

“Oh,” the gal said. “So in terms of skill, we’re talking—”

“Bad,” Peter said. “The worst.”

“Okay,” the gal said, accepting her mission with grace. “I’ve got just the thing.”

 

 

Peter had a bag stuffed with fuckload of huge, chunky, hand-dyed yarn and a series of Youtube videos saved to his phone telling him how to use it. He was furiously typing out a yelp review explaining in detail all of Sales Associate Tammy’s many wonderful, humanitarian attributes when he tripped.

Or rather, he seemed to trip. He certainly went down.

He caught himself painfully on his elbow, phone safely twisted out of harm’s way just at the last second, and he turned around to throw out the requisite ‘what gives, man?’ at the body behind him, when he found himself staring right into his own mask.

Awkward.

It was not Louis or Angel. Their masks were slightly different shades of red. This one was almost as florescent as his own, but not quite.

Someone who had seen him trip leaned over and took his elbow to help him up. He let her and, once standing, put himself between her and this silent, looming body. It did nothing. Just stood tall. Taller than Peter. Broader than Peter. He had to look up into that mask.

The Spidey Sense made him shiver. Made him acutely aware of the number of pedestrians stopping to frown at Spiderman looming over a civilian.

“Are you gonna apologize or what?” Peter asked the mask.

“You’re finished.”

Woah. What now?

“You’re _finished_.”

A fist came flying out of nowhere and Peter’s body startled back without his permission. A few of the folks behind him gasped and startled with him. The other fist followed suit and Peter almost caught that one in the shoulder.

“What the fuck, man?” he said, staggering back again.

“Run,” the mask snarled. When Peter failed to respond, the guy rolled his shoulders and bent a knee and the Spidey Sense flickered again in the nape of Peter’s neck.

“RUN.”

Ahahahahahaha.

No.

Try again.

The guy lurched forward and Peter felt more than saw the people around him flinch back at the movement and so he gave himself about a quarter of a calming breath. Then turned just enough to get a fist out into the guy’s path and lock it in place.

Man ran right into his goddamn fist and crashed right into the gutter.

The crowd hadn’t been expecting that. Peter watched the fucker writhe in pain on the concrete with a sneer and an arched eyebrow.

“What convention center did you come from, shithead?” he demanded, “Comin’ out here like you’re some kinda tough shit. That a Chicago accent on you? Get out of here, ya fuckin’ moron.”

And with that, he collected his dropped bag and his fancy wool and set back off on his way. He had to erase and retype half of his yelp review because of the keyboard smash.

“You’re _dead_ ,” the guy in the gutter called after him. “DEAD.”

Yeah, yeah. Whatever, motherfucker. Do your worst. Peter had a rug to make.

 

 

“DIE.”

Little Spidey gave Peter a look with her bubble tea straw stuck in her mouth. Miles leaned a little out into the center of the table to get a better look at the guy outside, plastering himself against the window and screeching profanity at Peter through it. Peter watched him with interest.

His cries were muffled by the glass.

He was really putting his back into this whole death threat thing.

“A friend of yours?” Louis asked. He stirred his iced tea absently.

 

 

Sir Diehard was still there when they finished up their meeting. A vote had been taken. And they had unanimously decided that the Avengers’ Doctor Doom problem was emphatically not their own. All requests to the contrary would be thereby resolutely ignored.

Miles agitated Peter as to when Wade was coming home and, because he was doing it, Little Spidey had to do the same on the other side, at twice the volume.

They all paused just outside the doorway when the other Spiderman staggered over and jabbed a finger into the center of Peter’s face. He panted a bit. Screaming profanity at a window was kind of a workout.

“You,” he wheezed. “Are dead.”

“Okay, sure,” Peter said. And then the troop left him there to take a sharp left towards the train station.

 

 

“I’m going to kill you!!”

“Peter, who is this guy?” MJ asked, pulling back the curtains in the living room window to give him a little wave.

“AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND, TOO.”

Peter stopped typing and looked at her over his reading glasses. Ned followed suit from the couch.

“I think he’s a fan,” Peter said.

“Huh.”

MJ waved again.

 

 

This was getting a little out of hand. The man really seemed to have nothing better to do than follow Peter, wailing, through the streets everywhere he went. Peter took to just standing around, watching him shriek. He must have been spooked by the whole rib-crunch the other day because he kept a solid three-foot radius between them at all times.

At the bus stop. On the train. In the courtyard in front of SI, where Peter was standing, sipping a juice box he’d stolen from the breakroom and watching him do a truly majestic, ‘I’m gonna getcha’ dance. He heard the sliding doors open behind him and shortly after was joined by Saanvi, Bo, and Avery who watched Mr. Gonna-Getcha in companionable silence for a few beats.

“This is new,” Avery noted.

“Yeah, he’s really dedicated,” Peter said. The volume of the guy’s threats increased so as to compensate for the increase in bodies.

“You gonna call the cops?” Saanvi asked.

“Mm. I’m more thinking that he needs a bottle of water or something. He’s been at it for hours. Gotta be thirsty.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll go get one,” Saanvi said, already on her way back in.

They offered the man the procured bottle. He swore at it and threatened Peter’s mother. Peter walked forward and he danced back. Peter placed the bottle on the step he had been occupying and then retook his place the safe three feet away.

The guy punted the bottle poorly. It went spinning off to the side and all the lab managers watched it go.

“Well, that’s just ungrateful,” Bo said, spinning around and heading back in. Avery shrugged, agreed, and followed after them.

Saanvi watched the guy nurse his now-sore foot for a moment, then to Peter said, “Maybe you should call security?”

Yeah. It was probably about time.

 

 

They all watched through the window as Mr. Gonna-Getcha was escorted off the premises by two guys from Happy’s team.

“Well, he’s a barrel of laughs,” Ave decided.

 

 

“Peter, who is this guy?” Mr. Stark asked as he was regaled with Mr. Getcha’s amazing mime of choking Peter right outside the atrium doors. Peter cocked an eyebrow.

Like, technically, he wasn’t in the building, so technically, he wasn’t in danger of being re-escorted. As soon as Peter stepped outside, he would for sure scramble over to try to set the record straight, though.

“I think he’s my new stalker,” he said.

“God, is it your pheromones or something?”

“I guess.”

“Should we do something about him?”

“Mm. Nah. He’s harmless. Cracked his ribs on my hand the other day. Think he’s just feeling a little bitter.”

“Ah. Well, if he starts bothering you, just let me know.”

Mmm. Can do.

 

 

“Hey,” Peter said over his shoulder, “Listen. You gotta be tired, man. Go home and sleep. I ain’t going anywhere tonight, yeah?”

The guy was piping hot, bouncing on his toes like a boxer. Fists up. Ready for a smack down. As in, for Peter to smack him down. Probably with a good flick.

He was big, but his muscles, as far as Peter could tell, were show muscles. The kind of guy who went to the gym specifically for big muscles. Peter got the feeling that if he called him ‘bro,’ he’d answer back with the same like it was some kind of mating call.

He was interested.

“Gonna fucking kill you,” the man said all juddery-like from the bouncing.

“Okay,” Peter said. “How about tomorrow, then? After a couple hours of sleep, eh?”

“Gonna fucking _kill_ you. Bring it. Come on. You scared? Yeah, you’re scared. Come on.”

Dude. Peter wasn’t the one enforcing this bubble business.

Right, okay. He’d give him one more day to collect his senses.

 

 

“COME ON,” a voice screamed into the otherwise quiet street.

Seriously, man?

“COME ON MOTHERFUCKER, COME. ON.”

Peter had fucking neighbors. He stared at the ceiling and then grabbed at his phone to glare at the time.

4:30am.

Lol. No.

He pulled the duvet over his head and rolled over.

 

 

He stared down from the window with a cup of coffee in hand. MJ slipped out of the bedroom and took his coffee for herself and then asked him when Ned was supposed to be back that night.

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” he said, not talking about Ned. MJ paused with her lips touching the rim of the mug. Then she carried on with her business.

“Don’t get stabbed,” she said.

 

 

“Alright, man. Tell me what’s up,” Peter said.

Mr. Getcha bounced around with greater intensity. He smelled like ass. Obviously hadn’t showered in days and been sweating up a storm in the suit. Gross. You gotta wash it out, man. That was rule number 3 of being Spiderman.

“Gonna—”

“Kill me, yeah I got that. Throw me a bone, here. Why?”

“GONNA—”

Peter snapped a hand out and grabbed the guy’s throat. He went quiet real quick.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Peter said calmly. “And then I’m gonna call the police and get a fucking restraining order. Why are you following me?”

The guy gasped and grabbed at the hand around his neck. Peter wasn’t even holding that hard. He wasn’t even tapping into the superstrength really. He’d just lodged his thumb into the side of the guy’s adam’s apple. Didn’t feel good, that.

“You wanna talk?” Peter asked.

The nodding was very helpful. Peter dropped the guy and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He’d wait. But not too long. He had work.

“You,” the guy wheezed. “You--you—you’re a fake.”

Come again?

“A _fake_. A fake, you heard me.”

Right. So. Hearing does not equal comprehension.

“A FUCKING FAKE. YOU’RE A FUCKING FAKE.”

Guy was going to give himself an aneurysm screaming like that.

“You need a hospital,” Peter decided. He dug out his phone and dialed. “Hello? Hi, this is Peter Parker. There’s a guy outside my building right now—oh no, he’s just been following me. Yeah, I think he’s having a bit of a breakdown—hmm?” he covered the phone’s receiver, “What’s your name, friend?”

“I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND,” Mr. Getcha screeched. “I’m SPIDERMAN. SPIDERMAN.”

“Yeah, so he’s Spiderman,” Peter said into the phone. The dispatcher on the other side said they were sending someone. “Aw, you’re great thanks. No, I’ll stay with him for now.”

He waited until the ambulance got there and then headed back upstairs to get ready for work.

 

 

He and MJ hid behind the bedroom door that night when Ned came in, confused at the lack of light in the place. They almost got him too, but they’d fucked up and worn crazy socks and Ned caught their toes peeking out from underneath the door.

“Where, oh where, could they be?” he asked, dumping his work laptop onto the back of the couch.

Caught.

Man.

Peter blamed it on MJ since she was the one who’d brought the socks into the sanctity of his home. MJ blamed him for letting her bring them in to begin with and really? She was totally right.

 

 

In the morning, Mr. Getcha was right back outside. Looking a little more hydrated. He was assaulting the public with a megaphone now and had even brought a plastic crate to stand on. He informed all passersby that he was the real Spiderman and that the man up in window three from the left was a fucking poser. He made this very clear. To the alarm of the little cliques of elementary school kids and parents trying to just use the crossing.

Peter sighed.

“All them muscles and not even a braincell to knock against,” MJ sighed with him.

“Should I do something?” he asked her and Ned when he finally deigned the world worthy of his rising.

“No, that’ll just encourage him,” MJ said.

Fair.

 

 

Two weeks of this. And Peter’s neighbors were legitimately hatching a neighborhood plot to kill this man. Peter saw it in their eyes when they passed the crosswalk in front of his house. Peter pitied the guy. He’d called the ambulance twice and still he came back. It was unfortunate, but Peter was going to have to go with the police this time. The threats were escalating and the guy was scaring the local kids and wildlife. Peter’s relationship with his targeted stray kitten was ruined.

It was the last straw.

He walked out and stood in front of Mr. Getcha while on the phone with the cops so that he would be fully aware of his predicament. The loudspeaker in Peter’s face certainly helped make his case to the gal on the other side of the line.

They sent a car.

Peter watched one of the officers push on Mr. Getcha’s head so as to protect it when he got into the car, but Mr. Getcha wasn’t that kind of guy. He refused to duck. To yield to the fuzz, in his words. And as a result, he damn near scalped himself on the way in.

Unfortunate.

Also, not Peter’s problem. He signed the document the other officer handed him and hiked back upstairs to get dressed.

 

 

“Peter.”

“I know.”

Mr. Getcha was fresh out of holding and had made a sign to hold in front of SI declaring himself Spiderman.

“If you’re not gonna do something about him, then I am,” Mr. Stark said.

Peter had an idea. He looked over and found that Mr. Stark had had one too.

“I’m gonna go get the suit,” Mr. Stark said. “You call the media.”

Copy that, sir.

 

 

Peter called _the Bugle_. Then Karen at _the Bulletin_. And then he let the PR department know that Mr. Stark was about to do something dumb and they all held hands in a circle to prepare themselves for the next few hours.

Mr. Stark waited until the press had gathered around the shouting Spidey outside and then he went out in the Ironman suit and formally asked him why the fuck he was standing around, violating Avengers protocol.

Mr. Getcha was stumped. He had not planned this far ahead in his crusade. Mr. Stark recognized this but kept going. He further demanded to know if Mr. Getcha had reconsidered his official withdrawal from the organization and asked if he’d be rejoining the Avengers. The press was fascinated. They weren’t usually privy to inner Avengers dealings. Or drama. They hadn’t been aware that Spiderman was boycotting (he wasn’t).

Mr. Getcha wasn’t aware of any of that, like, not even in the slightest. But he stood up tall and proud and announced that he would, in fact, be rejoining the Avengers. To which Mr. Stark responded, “great. Go take a shower. We got a mission in 48. Oh, yeah. Bring your team.”

Which the press fucking _loved_. Because while on social media, people had decided that all these Spideys were a team, the actual media had had no conclusive evidence that Peter and the copy-cats were all working together. This was their big break. And they now had a Spidey to interrogate.

“Mr. Spiderman, what do you have to say to those who say you are participating in child endangerment?”

“Spiderman, when did you break off with the Avengers?”

“Spiderman, can you tell us why you took a six month gap last year?”

Ha.

Sucker.

You wanna be Spiderman that bad? So be him.


	2. no no keep going youre doing great

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See, the problem was that the public didn’t know how the Spidey team worked and so neither did Mr. Getcha.

See, the problem was that the public didn’t know how the Spidey team worked and so neither did Mr. Getcha. Peter and Tony got to watch panic slowly creep over him as he realized exactly what he’d agreed to. He now had to find the team. And he had no fucking clue how.

Mr. Stark bet that he’d go hire a group of fourth graders to pretend to be Peter’s copycats. Peter pointed out that this was a man who’d brought a loudspeaker to a fist fight. He wasn’t smart enough to even consider that option. No, this idiot was going to go try to assemble the actual copycats.

Best of luck, pal. No, Peter wasn’t going to tell them. They’d be too kind to him if they knew what was going down and really, this guy needed a wake-up call.

 

 

Once Sir Diehard had scrambled off to go try to find the first copycat in the heaving mass of the city, Peter donned his own suit to go sabotage this asshole as best as he could. Did he try to hide?

Nope. Not his style. Instead he waltzed merrily through the street following after Mr. Getcha as he tried to catch up with the most volatile of all Peter’s proteges. A kid caught Peter’s elbow as he made his way to the scene of the eventual crime and, filmed by a million phones, he crouched down to ask them what was up.

“Is that other guy really Spiderman?” the girl asked, pointing in the direction that half the media had flown in, on Mr. Getcha’s heels.

“He really, really wants to be,” Peter told her.

“But he’s not,” she said with every bit of her flat affect her seven-year-old body could muster. It was considerable.

Peter shrugged.

“Name’s not important to me,” he said, “I’m loaning it for the day. Just along for the ride, if you will.”

“Oh. Okay, can I borrow it after him?” she asked.

Yeah, sure. Anything you want, sweetheart.

“You’re gonna need a mask,” he said.

 

 

Peter was only minorly kidnapping this child. He got her a mask from a dollar store and asked her big sis if he could borrow her for a minute. He put her on his shoulders and away they went to go watch Angel jab at the new guy’s abs in interest a couple blocks over in one of her favorite haunts. She looked up just as Peter and his new entourage rounded the corner. She perked up.

“Sup, Spidey?” she greeted him.

The little girl on Peter’s shoulders bounced with excitement. She grabbed at Peter’s head and leaned down to stage-whisper, “She’s my _favorite_.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Sometimes, she’s mine too.”

This pleased Angel enormously. She stood up a little straighter, wriggling in delight and then looked back at Mr. Getcha who was furious with Peter’s interference. He took the moment to get up in his face and tell to back off, _he_ was Spiderman now.

“No, no,” Peter said, “I believe you. I’m just cosplaying. Don’t mind me.”

A pause. Peter asked the girl on his shoulders to back him up. She did.

An excellent accomplice she was.

“Who’s this?” Angel asked, still absently punching Mr. Getcha’s oblique.

“I’m Spiderman,” Mr. Getcha snapped, squirming away from her knuckles. “And I am your leader and you will—”

“Board this boat and take me to Te Fiti,” Peter piped up. The girl on his shoulders screamed in joy. Mr. Getcha stared at Peter with huge empty eyes.

Aw.

“He don’t get it,” Peter said up to his accomplice.

“He’s boring,” she pronounced.

“Is this a new friend?” Angel asked, abandoning Mr. Getcha to inspect Peter’s accomplice.

“Yeah. I’m calling her Robin,” he said.

“I wanna be Moana,” Robin announced.

“I’m calling her Moana,” Peter amended.

“Oooooh. Hey, can I be the volcano lady then?” Angel asked.

Mr. Getcha sputtered off to the side, watching his control over the situation slip away like sand between his fingers.

“Nah, you’re too short,” Peter decided. “S3 is the volcano lady.”

“That’s not fair!”

“You can be Hei Hei.”

Angel squawked indignantly. Moana clutched at Peter’s chin and laughed hard enough that her whole body shook.

“NO,” Mr. Getcha snarled, interrupting them. He slapped a hand on Peter’s chest and pushed him away. “You,” he said to Angel, “Are on _my_ team. I am your team leader. And you will come with me. We have a mission.”

Angel considered this.

“Kay. So how much?” she said.

Mr. Getcha lost some of the wind in his sails.

“What do you mean, how much?”

“I mean,” Angel drawled, “How much you paying me? That guy pays me in food.” She pointed at Peter. This wasn’t technically untrue. Peter did buy her a lot of sandwiches and bubble teas. She did, however, also buy _him_ a lot of sandwiches and bubble teas. It was a give and take kind of thing. “What are you paying me?”

Mr. Getcha was stumped. He, nor anyone in the growing crowd, seemed to have considered this relationship to involve any type of exchange.

“Uh. I—well. What do you want?” he asked. Angel considered it.

“I wanna be the volcano lady,” she said.

“O..kay?”

“And I want a pony.”

“What.”

“And a stable. Can’t have a pony without a stable.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Also an evil stepmom. Working on my Rapunzel over here, but this guy,” she thumbed at Peter, “Ain’t exactly a sugar daddy.”

Mr. Getcha gaped at him. Peter shrugged.

“I always considered myself more of a sugar baby,” he said to the delight of all the camera phones.

“Fine,” Mr. Getcha decided out of nowhere. “Fine, you can—pony—whatever. You’ll come with me, then.”

Angel went still and considered all her options. Peter could practically see her devious smile leaking out of the edges of the suit.

“Why, _yes_ ,” she chirruped. “Yes, I will.”

Atta girl.

 

 

Peter returned Moana to her owner. Moana was sad to leave and told him that he was a great Maui and she appreciated him taking her out on an adventure.

“What are you talking about? Moana and Maui are a team, remember? You and me, we’re equals. So thank _you_ for the adventure. Give us five for democracy, yeah?”

He got five for democracy.

And then he said bye because he had to go watch Mr. Getcha try to get Louis to join up.

 

 

Louis was, of course, the tallest Spidey and he was just about half an inch taller than even this Spidey. He was the fan favorite, if Peter had to sort through their popularity on the internet. Mostly because a lot of folks mistakenly thought that Louis was the original Spidey. And when they were reminded that the original Spidey was the size of an ant, they tended to go with their dream version anyways.

It was early evening and Louis was out and about, on the hunt for dinner and then some peaceful tracking. He’d dedicated himself to methodically collecting the evidence a group of people planning an armed robbery were dutifully leaving behind.

Louis was a methodical kind of guy. The perps he chose to pursue on his own often found themselves webbed up with a baggie full of evidence against them wrapped lovingly around their middles. As a result, the police, on the whole, had decided that, while they were all horrible, the tallest Spidey was almost-alright in their books. He was, as much as any of them were, more or less a law-abiding vigilante.

Louis was surprised to be caught by Angel so early in the day, since there were no meeting plans that night.

“The real Spidey wants our help,” she said, gesturing at Mr. Getcha.

Louis wasn’t looking at Mr. Getcha. He was perturbed by the ever growing crowd of media folks and nosy onlookers around them. Peter squeezed between some people at the back and waved like a dance mom to show him this was okay.

Louis cocked his head and waved back.

Then perked up in understanding.

“You’re the guy on the news,” he said to Mr. Getcha who puffed up proud of himself.

“I am,” he said.

“The idiot.”

Peter started dying. Angel started dying. Their reactions sent a lot of folks in the crowd to chuckling.

“I’m not an idiot. I am Spiderman. And I’m forming a team—”

“Oh, so a different one from usual,” Louis interrupted.

“What? No. The same team. And you—”

“Aw, that’s sad. I thought we were getting a new team.”

“Shut up! You—you’re on the team.”

“He’s paying me in ponies,” Angel added helpfully.

“Oh,” Louis said. “We’re getting paid, now?”

Mr. Getcha realized now that he’d been conned. He rounded on Angel in fury but she just swayed.

“ _I’m_ getting paid. I dunno about you. You gotta negotiate,” she said. Louis crossed his arms and thought about it.

“I _do_ like getting paid,” he said, tapping his chin.

Mr. Getcha’s mask jerked as he worked his jaw. He snarled back at Peter but Peter ducked behind a group of middle schoolers and called out over them that he was doing great.

“Offer him some walnuts!” he called.

“Wal—”

“No, no, I’m over walnuts,” Louis sighed. “I’m thinking something more interesting. Like, hm. Hey, which are the radioactive ones?”

“Brazil nuts?” Angel tried.

“They radioactive?”

“I think so. Them or bananas.”

“Bananas ain’t nuts, girl. Come on, get with the program.”

“No,” Angel said with a knowledgeable finger, “They’re berries.”

A pause.

“Come off it.”

“They’re _berries_ , I’m tellin’ you.”

“Everyone says everything is berries, that’s just nonsense. I know what a berry is.”

“Yeah, duh. Everyone knows what a berry is. It’s a banana.”

Peter covered his face and muffled his wheezing, but the middle schoolers were all giggling with him and the joke was spreading. Mr. Getcha tried to get the other two back on track but it was hopeless.

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

“Spidey! Tell this man that bananas are berries!”

Peter said nothing. When the call was repeated he made a show of transferring authority to Mr. Getcha who was not prepared to take it and was rapidly coming to see that he’d fucked up big time thinking that he could just gather a Spidey team.

“No one can tell me bananas are berries because they aren’t,” Louis maintained to be contrary. Then, because he was feeling uncharacteristically dramatic, he said, “And until you admit that, I’m not joining your team.”

Oho, Mr. Getcha. Your move. Peter made a show of looking at the guy and, following his bad influence, so did the crowd. Poor sap. He was starting to get stage fright.

A few minutes of waffling and Peter decided he’d throw the guy a bone.

“Why don’t we google it?” he asked very loudly. The middle school kids he’d attached himself to were eight times funnier than he was and they all gasped super loud at the suggestion and started murmuring among themselves about how smart that was.

Mr. Getcha felt kind of pressured. He turned a little helplessly to the others.

“Why don’t we google it?” he tried.

Louis and Angel were pleased at his submissiveness. They googled it, in full knowledge of what they were going to find. This argument had already been had and settled a few weeks ago when Louis came to a job, distraught in the newfound knowledge that tomatoes were berries. Much googling had occurred by all parties since and Wade had cut all berries out of his diet for a week in protest of the results.

Louis acquiesced in the face of his loss and agreed to join the team.

 

 

“How many more?” Mr. Getcha asked a little desperately.

“Depends on your team,” Angel said thoughtfully. “Usually, there’s one more Spidey and a Daredevil and then a Deadpool and we’re done. So you’re halfway there!”

Mr. Getcha appeared to be having second thoughts.

Peter decided to cheer him on. He made friends with a group of office gals who cheered with him.

 

 

Miles was unimpressed with Mr. Getcha.

Miles stared at Mr. Getcha, held out his hand, and Peter intervened. In front of everyone, he called a time out and stuck a finger in Miles face and said ‘no venom bites.’ Then he cleared things to carry on and returned to his place in the crowd.

The gesture had its intended effect. Mr. Getcha now knew damn well that Peter remained the one in control here and this whole thing was one long, drawn out joke. He sagged a bit and then caught a second wind of rage. He grabbed Miles’s arm and lit up blue and white.

“Bitsy,” Peter scolded with his new, new friends, a gaggle of reporters all wearing primary colors. He’d charmed them by pointing out that they were all on the same team here, and look, even all matching. They were well-charmed. He rested his arms across their shoulders, making extra sure to get his elbow all the way up onto the edge of the tallest guy’s. A little off balance, but that was the fun part.

“He touched me first,” Miles argued.

Mr. Getcha collected himself off the ground, a little singed. Very shocked.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded.

Miles stared up at him and squinted.

“He smells bad,” he tattled to Peter, pointing at Mr. Getcha like Peter wouldn’t know who he was talking about.

“Yeah, _now_ he does,” Angel said.

“No, he actually smells better now,” Louis decided. “Burnt is better than whatever funk he had going on before.”

“I—I—” Mr. Getcha was having a hard time with words. “I—Am _Spiderman_.” Good on you man. Keep up the tenacity. “And you will—”

“Board my boat!” Angel chanted. Miles perked up at this.

“And sail to Te Fiti??” he asked.

“Bitch, I wasn’t done,” Angel snapped at him.

“Hey, can I be the volcano lady?”

“No. Everyone can’t be the volcano lady, there is only one volcano lady,” Angel said. Miles pouted.

“It’s an island, we can make a circle of volcanos,” he said.

“NO. There is only one volcano lady and it’s S3,” she maintained, pointing at Louis. He slapped a hand on his heart like he was touched. “Pick another one.”

“Okay, then I wanna be Hei Hei,” Miles decided.

“Too late, I’m Hei Hei,” Angel countered. “Try again.”

“But _I_ wanna be Hei Hei.”

“I’m shortest, so I get Hei Hei.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“No, you’re not.”

“So you’re saying, _you’re_ the shortest Spidey?” Angel asked.

A pause. Miles examined this trap and stepped around it neatly.

“Who’s Spidey?”

“He’s the pig.”

Peter laughed so hard he snorted. This made all his reporter friends’ lose composure. Mr. Getcha held his arms loosely at his side. He finally understood now, just what he’d volunteered himself for.

“I don’t want this,” he said to Peter.

“Sorry?” Peter said once he’d collected himself. “I couldn’t—sounds to me like you’re giving up the mask. Are you giving up the mask?”

Mr. Getcha turned around to the expectant wide eyes of all the copycats. Boring into his soul. He turned back to Peter.

“Yes?”

Awwwwww.

Sorry, pal. You reap what you sow.

“Huh-uh, man. Spiderman never quits,” Peter said, jolting his body into proper posture. “Spiderman never quits, right guys?”

The copycats all assumed the same rigid posture. Hunched their shoulders a bit.

“Spiderman never quits,” Miles said for all of them. “Follow through, _Spiderman_.”

Mr. Getcha panicked and looked back to Peter for help. Peter stepped out of the crowd and walked over to take his hand in his own.

“Follow though, Spiderman,” Peter said. Then once the guy’s horror had really started to sink in, he shook the hand and said, “Maybe, if you ask really, really nicely, this poser might even help you out.”

Aw, look at that dread. Look at that regret.

Feeling the burn, yet, friend?

“Please?” Mr. Getcha whimpered.

Now, that’s what Peter liked to hear. Let’s get some manners up in this place.

“Of course,” he said with a grin he knew made it to his voice. Then he dropped his shoulders.

“This is Spiderman,” he announced into his comm in his battle tone. “D2 and DP, we need your presence at Broadway and Marcy. We have an application to consider.”

He got confirmation.

“And now,” he said with a grin. “We wait.”

 

 

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Dave asked in his Daredevil suit. He and this Spidey were about the same height, but Dave’s muscles were actually useful. He got in Mr. Getcha’s face like he wanted to bite him. The guy practically shit himself. The Daredevil suit was a lot scarier than the Spidey suits.

“He’s our leader,” Angel said.

“Our what?”

“Leader.”

“We have a leader?”

Aaaaaaaand the point was made. Thank you for your service, David.

Mr. Getcha’s other braincell finally dropped.

“You don’t—you don’t have—but—”

“WOW. Get a load of this guy.”

“Hey, Wade,” they all chorused.

Mr. Getcha went silent and still.

“Why, hello, children,” Wade sang. “Is this our latest applicant?”

“He’s our _leader_ ,” Angel emphasized, as Mr. Getcha woke the fuck up and tried to slap hands over her mask to muffle her.

Wade cocked his head slowly.

“Is he now?” he asked. He made himself even bigger than normal by rolling his shoulders back and crossing his gigantic arms over his chest. “Kinda small to be a leader. What’re your qualifications, pal?”

“I’m not—this has been a misunderstanding,” Mr. Getcha babbled.

Oh, _now_ it was a misunderstanding, was it? Peter gave him a scathing look.

“He keeps trying to quit, Wade, I dunno if we should even give him a shot,” he said. “Which is weird, ‘cause he sure wanted to be Spiderman last week. Harassing civilians and all that.”

Wade rolled his head in Mr. Getcha’s direction and looked him up and down with his white eyes.

“Unfortunate,” was all he said. The crowd had gotten real nervous.

“Very unfortunate,” Peter echoed. “Couldn’t even follow through with the mission Ironman gave him. Almost like he doesn’t want it enough.”

“Almost like he ain’t got what it takes,” Dave thought out loud.

“Almost like he’s a fucking quitter,” Angel added.

A long pause.

“Well, friend,” Wade said decisively, “Seems like you ain’t a great fit for the job. But why don’t we take a vote, yeah? That’s how we do things in our group, in case you didn’t know. All in favor of admitting Spidershit?”

All hands stayed down. Wade whistled.

“I think we’ll spare you vote part two,” he said kindly. “You got anything you want to add to your case?”

Mr. Getcha was scared out of his fucking mind. Surrounded as he now was by five living night-terrors and the Babadook.

“N—n—”

“Sorry, pooh-bear, I can’t hear you, hon,” Wade said.

“I—I—”

“Can’t hear you,” Louis said gently.

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

“What?” Miles asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Peter demanded.

“For. I’m sorry for—I—you. You’re the real Spiderman. I’m sorry for b-bothering you and-and your friends.”

Peter considered this. This man seemed to know his identity, but he was scared enough. That would be a personal discussion that they’d have when all these cameras had finally turned off.

“All in favor of accepting this guy’s apology?” he asked the group.

All hands went up. Peter left his own down until the last second.

“Alright,” he finally said, “I guess you’re free to go.”

 

 

Corey Stoops, was this guy’s name. He sat across from Peter in the conference room at SI with Mr. Stark sitting patiently on Peter’s side of the table.

“Stalker,” Peter said plainly.

“I’m sorry.”

Peter flicked his eyes down to give the guy a once-over.

“Not good enough,” he said.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Mr. Stoops pleaded.

“You stood outside my apartment and screamed at me for two weeks, man. I’m fine, people don’t think I’m crazy, they think _you’re_ crazy. But, while we’re on the topic, how did you know who I was?” Peter asked. Mr. Stark folded his hands neatly together. Pleased with how Peter was handling this.

“A—a guy told me.”

“Name.”

“Christopher Meriwether.”

“Address.”

“I don’t know.”

“Date of contact.”

“Two months ago. I’m _sorry_. I was just—”

“Stupid,” Peter said evenly. “Obviously. I don’t care why you did it. I want to know why this guy set you up to do it. So why. Tell me. _Now_.”

Stoops swallowed and fidgeted and under the gaze of Ironman and in full view of Peter’s crossed arms, he cracked.

“He wants to drive you out.”

“To kill me.”

“To make you so low you want to do it yourself.”

“Hm. Noted. Mr. Stark?”

Mr. Stark sucked in a breath and leaned back.

“Only one thing for it,” he sighed.

“I’m so sorry—”

“You take us to Meriwether.”

“W-what?”

“You heard me,” Mr. Stark said patiently.

“I don’t know where he is. He just hired me online.”

Tony looked at Peter and Peter met his gaze.

He leaned forward onto the desk.

“Then you’re gonna help me find him,” he said.

 

 

 


	3. road cones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “DON’T BITE ME.”

“Corey, Corey, Corey,” Peter sang to his new best friend. Corey’s gym buddies were very confused. Corey was _extremely_ embarrassed, which Peter resolutely did not feel bad about.

“Avoiding me, Corey-boy?” he sing-songed. “Never call, never write. Starting to feel a little lonely, Corey-boy.”

He draped himself over the machine Corey was using to jack up his already massive arms. Had been using, anyways, before Peter and his pert little ass had sauntered up to the second floor of the gym and made eye-contact.

You think you can play Spiderman, Corey? Wrong. Spiderman plays you.

“You know this guy?” One of Corey’s bros asked. A big guy with a crew cut. Probably military or ex-military. Peter smiled at him and his lips flickered for a second in return before he caught himself. Peter winked.

Corey’s bro stiffened, dropped eye contact, and cleared his throat. Corey visibly panicked.

“Yeah, sorry, he’s a buddy from sch—”

“Dance,” Peter corrected, pleased as punch. He could practically hear the air whistling out of Corey’s lungs in his silent scream. “I’m his dance partner. We tango. You wanna show them, boo-bear?”

“GIMME A SECOND,” Corey squeaked urgently to his buddies in horror.

 

 

“Dude, you’re making me look—”

“I could kill you where you stand, Stoops—you wanna play with that fire?”

Corey ripped his finger out of Peter’s face and did a cute little frustration lap of the locker room.

“I didn’t agree to this,” he snapped.

“And I didn’t agree to being stalked for the second time in a year,” Peter said with a smile. “And I conveniently didn’t press charges which is really saying something given that you’ve been screaming outside my window for—”

“Shut up! Alright. Alright, I get it. I said sorry already.”

“Apologies are trash when you don’t mean them,” Peter sang.

“Dude, just—”

“Stop makin’ you look gay?”

“No, that’s not what I—”

“Hey, why don’t we do this? I will reinstate your big tough-man reputation if you _answer your goddamn phone when I call you._ How does that sound?”

Corey clenched his teeth and while he thought about his life choices, Peter toyed with the seam on his athletic tights. He’d gotten gray ones because Miles told him his blue ones made him look like a mermaid. He was not a mermaid. He was a kelpie at best.

Miles didn’t know what a kelpie was and so the joke was lost on him.

“Fix it,” Corey decided.

“Good choice,” Peter said. Then popped off the edge of the sink. “Away we go.”

 

 

Peter could bench an eighteen-wheeler, and he could leg-press even more than that. But it would be pretty conspicuous for a skinny guy like him to bench press that much weight, so he went for the latter. Nobody questioned the thunder thighs at the gym.

He put the maximum weight on the press and pretended to put his back into it, for the benefit of Corey and his gym buddies. After the twelfth rep, he stopped and looked back and asked if anyone wanted to try their luck on top.

On the way out, big-strong crew cut’s smile didn’t flicker.

 

 

“What’s crew-cut’s name?” Peter asked when they are back out on the street.

“That’s my brother,” Corey snapped.

“Oooooh. He’s cute.”

“You’re gross.”

“He likes me.”

“Don’t talk to him.”

“Does he know his little bro’s a Spiderman impersonator?”

Peter wove around a group of kids pushing their friend down the sidewalk in a wagon. It was hot. Getting hotter. His new tights were sweltering.

“Listen, man. I fucking said—”Corey growled.

“No, you listen, _bro_ ,” Peter interrupted, “I know you’re used to all them muscles getting you your way with everyone else, but me? I don’t fucking care. And it don’t matter how many times you apologize to me, I still do not fucking care. We had a deal. You take me to Meriwether, and I don’t make your life a living hell, and you have failed to deliver, my man. I am merely holding up my end of this bargain.”

Corey sucked in a breath and held it for a good few seconds before releasing it. He did that a few times while heading down the street for somewhere with less people. Peter was sure to be right on his heel. Corey was a certifiable idiot. One of them guys who thought that being a superhero would be badass because you were ripped and important and you always got the girl. Well, he wasn’t _wrong_ , per se. Peter was indeed ripped and important. And he did indeed have his girl. And his guy. But Corey couldn’t know that because Peter was setting this kid up to think that he was single and ready to mingle.

He seemed threatened by it and there was nothing quite like acting on that impulse to dig in your fingers.  

Corey found them a park to stand in.

“I haven’t heard from him,” he finally said. “I sent him an email saying shit didn’t work out and haven’t heard from him since.”

“You lying to me?” Peter asked cheerfully.

“No.”

“Really? Okay, gimme your hand.”

Corey ripped it behind his back.

“Hell no.”

“If you’re scared, then you’re lying. If you ain’t lying, you got nothing to be scared about,” Peter said.

Would he break this boy’s fingers? Nah. But the threat was doing the work for him. Corey scoffed and looked around anxiously, then ducked his head.

“I got a spam email from him,” he said, refusing to meet Peter’s eyes. “It was one of those automated message things. Said he was out on vacation.”

“Forward it to me,” Peter said.

“Fine.”

“Now.”

“What, here?”

Peter was not wearing his joking face. He was 100% sure he was not wearing his joking face.

“Okay, okay.”

Corey pulled out his phone and Peter waited patiently, surveying the park, as he completed the task. His eyes stopped on a man in a suit. In the park? Black suit. Sunglasses. In 98 degree weather. Options: secret service, security, funeral, or covert operative. President wasn’t in town—rules out secret service. No flashing lights or tags on cars around, not a funeral. That left security or operative.

Didn’t look like SHIELD. Not wily enough.

Who are you, friend? And who are you watching?

“Parker? Hey, Parker?”

“Hmm?”

Corey gave him stank eye.

“I sent it,” he said.

“Oh, good. Thank you. You’re dismissed,” Peter said cheerfully. Corey frowned at him and then looked behind himself where the operative had once stood. He was now gone.

Oho.

Gotcha.

 

 

“Hi,” Peter said.

The guy gasped and staggered back towards the mouth of the alley.

“My name’s Ben Abels,” Peter said, “I work for _The Bugle_ , for our fashion section, I was just wondering if I could get a picture of you, I mean, your look is mega classic—”

He caught the punch and twisted the guy’s wrist so as to discourage a second one. He screamed. Peter shushed him.

“There are people around,” he said sharply. “You trying to make a scene, big guy?”

“Get off.”

“You carryin’?”

“GET OFF.”

That’s a yes.

Peter shoved the guy’s jacket forward and liberated the gun. He released his grip on the man’s wrist and waved the gun at him.

“These? I don’t like,” he said, then twisted the thing in his hands until it cracked. He dropped it. The guy gaped at the wrecked piece on the ground in horror.

“Tell your boss that I don’t like them, yeah?” Peter said. “Oh, and also tell him he’s acting like an amateur. Pft. Sending a guy in black out in the middle of fuckin’ summer. The nerve of y’all. Think I’m some kind of—”

Ah, the second weapon. Peter snapped a hand over the muzzle.

“Go on,” he goaded, staring right into the man’s eyes. His hands shook. Yeah, not used to the target being so close, huh? Not used to them seeing you before you see them, huh?

Probably a sniper. Not a good one, though.

He threw the muzzle to the side and the guy gasped at the loss of contact. He dropped his eyes.

Amateurs.

Peter left him there, scrabbling around, trying to figure out where his mark went. He drummed his own fingers against the opposite side of the building boxing the alley in from the right. Sniper. Broad daylight. Spam email. Auto response.

Stalking. Times two.

Word was spreading. Gotta cut that shit off before it got too far.

Sorry, man. You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He watched the guy step out of the alley with hand up touch his comm. A flick of the wrist and the hand was frozen in place with web. Shocked, the man spun around Peter put him to sleep before he even knew what hit him. Peter left him in front of the nearest police station with a little note that said ‘concealed carry?’ and a twisted mass of metal that had once been two guns.

 

 

“Meriwether’s a dumb name,” Angel said, settled alongside him, kicking her feet out over the city.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” he agreed.

“Why’re people always trying to kill you?”

“Well this guy allegedly wants me to kill myself.”

“Is it pheromones?”

Peter paused.

“Yeah, probably. Either that or my charming disposition.”

“Are we gonna have to track a murderer?”

“No, that’d be too easy,” Peter sighed. “We’ve gotta track a not-quite murderer. Much harder.”

Angel kicked her feet and said nothing. The wind was hot, even way up high as they were.

“Kay, how do we do that?” she finally asked.

“Not sure yet. Let’s go find out,” Peter told her.

 

 

“Heya, Corey.”

Corey blanched at the arrival of Little Spidey out of her suit, grinning and swaying like a mongoose.

“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“Aw, bummer,” Peter said, tossing an arm over her shoulder. “You already forgot her? That’s just rude.”

“So rude,” Angel pouted.

Corey went even paler.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“We don’t care,” Peter said automatically, “Hey, that email you sent me looks hella fake, can you forward me the one you sent originally?”

 

 

They took these emails to Wade who dealt with heat about as well as he dealt with most minor inconveniences: poorly.

“This fucking city—”

“Wade.”

“You’d think after fifteen goddamn summers in this mother _fucking_ hellscape—”

“Wade.”

“—you’d get used to this shit, but no. Every year, Peter, every year is another step down into the netherworld.”

Peter looked at Little Spidey. She bared her teeth back and then bared them at Wade’s miserable back, stretched out over his couch. Wade wasn’t genetically built to withstand this kind of heat. He was never more Canadian than when faced with starting a fire, a flock of geese, or a New York heat wave.

Peter sighed so hard his shoulders dropped and then he caught ahold of Angel’s wrist and they went back down the building’s stairs.

They came back up shortly with a bag of ice and a box of ice cream bars. The bag, Peter threw onto the flat of Wade’s back and he moaned suggestively at the shock. Peter tapped his foot with his hands on his hips and waited. Angel unwrapped an ice pop and offered it to him. Peter took it and incorporated it into his irritable tapping posture.

When the ice started to melt a little, Wade finally deigned to flop over. Peter held out the ice pop. Wade looked at it, then back at him.

“I’m busy,” he decided.

“No, you’re not. I got emails that need tracking,” Peter said. He shook the ice pop.

“Castle’s got a guy who can do it,” Wade said.

“Name?”

“They call him Micro.”

Dumb name.

“Give it.”

Peter handed over the ice pop and let Angel stuff one into her mouth before sending her off to go find Miles to have him find Castle. Peter needed to go check in on his covert operative.

 

 

It was so fucking hot, Christ. Matt would be coming home soon for his and Foggy’s wedding and Peter could not, for the life of him, understand why he’d picked now of all times to have it. Matt hated the heat almost as much as Wade hated the heat and the two of them together between the months of June to August were just fucking limp slugs soaked in sweat.

Useless.

Furthermore, Peter didn’t want to wear a suit in this weather. He himself was not a useless sweat slug in summer, but the thought of any type of cloth insulating his skin at the moment was unbearable.

Ugh.

His mark was in a new suit and just looking at him made Peter want to go find a bucket of ice to douse him with.

He waited, sweating, around the side of the church the guy was wandering around in, for about ten minutes. Then, even his mark was overwhelmed by the indoor temperature. He opened the door to step out for a cigarette and Peter caught him before it closed.

“Hey,” he said as the guy struggled pinned against his front so he couldn’t see Peter’s face, “Remember me? It’s Ben from _the Bugle_. Did you, by chance, send my thanks to your boss?”

The mark tried to bite his fingers. Peter pressed them in harder so he couldn’t angle his head enough for it.

“Question, answer. It’s not hard,” he said. “Unless you got another gun for me?”

A pause in the struggling.

Yeah, Peter could feel it crushed into his gut.

“It’d be kinda embarrassing to have to ask for a third, wouldn’t it?” he asked the guy.

The struggle seemed a little more half-hearted this time. And thank fuck because all this friction and body heat was making Peter feel a little like a microwaveable burrito. His mark made a cry of frustration and then eventually a soft, begrudging sound of defeat.

Peter eased up his grip.

“Gonna play ball?” he asked.

“No,” his mark spat.

Too bad. Back into weasel-jail you go.

Peter locked the vice grip back into place and let the guy struggle his heart out. He waited. Feeling sweat behind his knees. Eventually his new best friend screamed in muffled exasperation.

“Wanna try again?” Peter offered.

The guy tried to kick him.

“I got all day,” Peter told him and his furiously shaking fists.

He had all day, but he intended for this to only last five more minutes.

“Christopher Meriwether,” Peter said patiently into the guy’s ear. “He worth your life?”

“Sp-Spiderman doesn’t kill,” his mark mumbled.

“True that,” Peter said, “I guess I’ll just have to bite you.”

Dead. Silence.

“Wh-what?”

“You heard me, pal.”

Oh, look. Real fear.

“Don’t bite me!”

“Mmm, I mean. I don’t want to, but you’re making that—”

“DON’T BITE ME.”

“Shh! You’re the one making that decision, man. Not me.”

“That’s not his real name!”

“Now we’re cooking with gas. Go on, friend.”

“Michael Ballard—don’t bite me!”

“I’m thinking about it, the longer we chat the less bitey I feel, although I will say, the power to stick to walls, hyper-metabolism, super libido, what’s not to love?”

“I’ve got a wife!”

“Her name Michael Ballard?”

“Based in Chicago. Wants—wants people like you for his company.”

“For security detail?”

“Yes.”

“He dealing?”

“Yes.”

Peter dropped his mark and stood over him on the concrete. The piss and trash down there was boiling. Wafting up to Peter’s nose, inescapable.

“I see you bopping around in that suit again and we’re gonna have words,” he said.

“Don’t—”

“Maybe even some teeth.”

“Please don’t—”

Peter huffed and reached down to grab the guy’s arm. He flinched away hard, but Peter just plopped him back onto his feet and dusted off the worst of the garbage. Sent him back into the building, stiff-legged, then hurried off to go see where Angel and Miles were at.

 

 

Castle was very good with Miles and Angel. He had a soft spot for small people and Miles would be even younger than his own kids if they hadn’t been murdered. As such, he was more likely to open the door to those two than he was to Peter these days.

Peter had outgrown his small and youthfulness. Alas, the passage of time was relentless.

He texted them to figure out which safehouse he needed to head to and bought himself an iced coffee while he waited for the response.

 

 

Castle was unaffected by the heat, which was further proof in Peter’s eyes that he was either a Gollum or a vampire. He did, however, take one look at Peter’s adorable summer get up and snort, so he was apparently still capable of feeling something.

“Kid, there a reason you run around lookin’ like a flag all the time?”

Rude.

Peter owned exactly one pair of shorts, alright? And he just so happened to own many, many different t-shirts, which statistically mandated that he had a few red ones. Furthermore, none of that was relevant.

“I got a guy called Michael Ballard on my ass right now,” he explained. “One of his guys says he’s dealing—presumably a lot, given that he’s looking for people to break down so that he can offer ‘em a security gig.”

“That so?” Castle said. Max’s nails clicked against the floor behind him and shortly after the sound came the big sad, panting pitbull himself. Miles cooed at him. Angel wriggled past him to get to Peter’s other side for extra dog-protection.

“Yeah, we got two emails from him under a different name,” Peter explained. “Wade says you know a guy who can track them?”

Castle raised an eyebrow.

“He’s a little above your paygrade, kid,” he said. “Ask someone else.”

Ugh.

Bummer.

“You sure?” Peter needled.

“Positive.”

Damn. Well, at least there was Max to love on.

 

 

FUCK. It was so goddamn hot.

 

 

He laid on Ned until Ned could no longer bear the sticking of their skin and finally said, fine. He’d track the fucking email, Jesus Christ.

Peter would have kissed him except he was irritated and didn’t want Peter to be touching any part of his body. MJ smirked at Peter and sidled into Ned’s side, a natural heat suck and vampire.

Rude.

Ned verified that his guy was in Chicago and then sent Peter out for cold drinks.

 

 

Sunday was not better.

He texted Wade to make sure he was more or less human and got nothing back for three hours. After that, he texted every ten minutes or so and then made the executive decision to go make sure he wasn’t slowly stewing himself to death.

He promised he’d bring cold things back on the way home.

He ran into Dave in a drenched t-shirt, trying to corral his equally drenched kid into drinking Gatorade at a fountain just outside Hell’s Kitchen. Charlie announced that Gatorade was a nasty salt potion and tried to get Peter to agree with her that her father was trying to poison her.

He was not. So he claimed anyways.

He hadn’t heard from Wade either, but he had heard from Matt and he was being weirdly evasive.

That was suspicious, but also Matt’s typical state of being when emotions were being had. He had two weeks until his wedding. Emotions were definitely being had.

FUCK.

“What?” Dave asked, at attention. Charlie tried to sneak the Gatorade into one of his shorts pockets.

“I gotta get a suit,” Peter groaned.

“Oh, shit. No, me too—honey, no. Take that.—What color are you thinking?”

Matt had lobbied for black but Foggy, having the sense to know that they were going to literally be sinners sweating in church, had vetoed it for a lighter gray. At which point, Matt decided that he didn’t actually care all that much so long as there were fucking peonies at the reception. He was very insistent. He’d wanted them with lavender, but Karen had convinced him to go with jasmine instead.

It was going to be a boiling, but beautiful and highly aromatic day.

“If they’re wearing gray, then maybe—I dunno, teal? Should I go with teal?”

“Mm, like, gray-teal. I was thinkin’ tan, myself.”

Dave was so good at suits. Even if none of his ever fit his shoulders.

“I might do a blue-gray,” Peter decided. Then abruptly remembered Wade. “Sorry, gotta go check on the Wilson soup. I’ll see you around!”

 

 

Wade did not appear to have moved an inch since Peter and Angel left him the day before. He did, however, seem to have gathered the strength to peel off his shirt.

“Wade, are you dying?” Peter asked the scars on his back.

Wade made a soft affirmative noise.

Peter went into the kitchen to go fetch the reviving bag of ice.

 

 

“You’ve gotta drink water, Wade, I dunno how you’ve lived here for fifteen years without figuring that out,” Peter sighed once Wade was mostly back to fighting condition.

“I am drowning in sweat,” Wade moaned. “I don’t need more fluid. The last thing I need is more fluid.”

Reason was not appealing to Wade at the present time. Bella wouldn’t even let Peter touch her, she was so hot. She’d parked herself in front of the rotating fan and spread herself out as best as she could.

“I can’t with you, old man,” Peter told Wade’s again prostrated form on the couch.

“Me either, just let me suffer.”

And he called Matt dramatic.

Peter dropped a new wet wash cloth on Wade’s back and hunched back over to text Ned and MJ verifying that Wade was not yet soup.

“Hey, what are you wearing to Red’s wedding?” he asked the immovable blob.

“Fuck.”

Yeah, his thoughts precisely.

“The guy who hired my stalker is dealing dope,” Peter said after a beat or so with no further elaboration on Wade’s part. “I don’t want to deal with him, he’s in Chicago. You know anyone round those parts?”

“Nate’s there right now,” Wade said into the couch cushion.

“Can he intimidate someone for me?”

Wade tossed his phone into Peter’s lap without looking, then muttered a soft ‘fuck’ again, probably at the general idea of the wearing clothes in this heat.

Peter opened Wade’s messaging app and then had to decipher this month’s code to figure out which series of emojis was Cable.

 

 **WW:** hey cable its SM, wade says you’re in Chicago atm, is that true?

 **(ʘ** **言** **ʘ** **╬** **) *˖˚˖* (** **灬** **ºωº** **灬** **)** **♡** **:** yeah

 **WW:** can you scare a guy shitless for me?

 **(ʘ** **言** **ʘ** **╬** **) *˖˚˖* (** **灬** **ºωº** **灬** **)** **♡** **:** yeah. Name?

 **WW:** Michael Ballard

 **(ʘ** **言** **ʘ** **╬** **) *˖˚˖* (** **灬** **ºωº** **灬** **)** **♡** **:** oh

 **(ʘ** **言** **ʘ** **╬** **) *˖˚˖* (** **灬** **ºωº** **灬** **)** **♡** **:** hey kid don’t sweat him

 

Ominous.

 

 **WW:** what does that mean

 **(ʘ** **言** **ʘ** **╬** **) *˖˚˖* (** **灬** **ºωº** **灬** **)** **♡** **:** yeah just don’t

“Wade, Cable says not to sweat my would-be murderer,” Peter said. “What does that mean?”

Wade didn’t turn over.

“Means he’s on his list.”

Oh.

“He’s not gonna—”

“Peter, I am _suffering_. Yes. He is going to kill him. No, there is no convincing him otherwise.”

Peter huffed and looked at the phone. Wade was no fun in a bad mood. And Cable didn’t really listen to people outside him and Dom.

“I don’t want him dead,” he said quietly.

“Maybe you don’t,” Wade said and didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Cable would take care of Ballard come hell or high water. He wasn’t afraid of a little heat. And he sure as shit wasn’t afraid of anything Peter had to offer.

Man. It still sucked though. He’d scared the shit outta that guy in the suit for nothing.

“That’s how it goes sometimes, Petey-cakes,” Wade said, patting back at him and confiscating his phone before Peter did anything good with it.

 

 


	4. you're in it now bub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S4: hey Peter
> 
> Oh. That wasn’t good.  
> Proper names were harbingers of bad-decision-making.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> texting heavy chapter ahead!
> 
> Just a reminder for the names: 
> 
> SM - Peter  
> S2 - Little Spidey  
> S3 - Louis  
> S4 - Miles  
> DP - Wade  
> DD - Matt  
> D2- Dave

Peter fanned Bella and forced Wade to drink another bottle of Gatorade before leaving them to suffer in slightly better moods than before. Bella recovered enough to give him a few scratchy licks on the way out. He headed down the stairs, back towards Queens and bought an ice cream on the way out to apply to the guilt swirling around his heart at the fate of the soon-to-be-late Michael Ballard, who had unfortunately failed to appreciate the type of fire he was playing with.

Peter’s phone buzzed in his pocket about halfway home.

 **S4:** any word on our guy?

 

Only sad ones. Peter shoved his popsicle stick into his mouth to text back.

 **SM:** yeah. He is no longer our problem. Thanks for your help. Can someone stop by Wade’s place in like three or four hours to make sure he hasn’t perished?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : life is unforgiving and cruel

 **S3:** yeah I can do it

 **S4:** is our guy still a living problem or…?

 **SM:** not a question you want the answer to, friend. P sure we can finally stop harassing Corey tho

 **S2:** thank god. that guy’s got no sense of humor. His brother is cute tho have y’all seen his brother? Very nice.

 **SM:** agreed. Maybe we should keep him

 **S2:** spidey sometimes you just get me

 **S3:** hey question? What are y’all wearing to Red’s wedding?

 **SM:** oh god not this again. Tan? Blue-gray? Grey-teal? I can’t decide

 **SM:** matt do you guys have a dress code?

 **DD:** good morning everyone it is fucking HOT

 **S2:** I have great news for you DD. When you get here it’s gonna be even hotter

 **DD:** why the fuck did we plan a may wedding?

 **DD:** whose shit idea was that?

 **SM:** yours

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : yours

 **S2:** yours

 **DD:** I am an idiot why was I in charge of that?

 **SM:** idk. Dress code?

 **DD:** I have no idea let me ask the boss

 **DD: [voice message]** The boss is in low spirits today and has sarcastically repeated the question back to me.

 **DD: [voice message]** I presume this means no.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : same, nelson. same

 **DD: [voice message]** Wear whatever. The only thing I will say is that we will be in a church, and my mother will be present, so please do not disgrace me in front of those higher powers.

 **S2:** booty shorts and flip flops it is

 **S4:** my mom and dad want to know why I’ve been invited to a wedding. what do I tell them??

 **SM:** tell them its your best friends’ cousin’s wedding.

 **S4:** my best friend is first gen Filipino and Chinese.

 **SM:** do not tell them that

 **S4:** we have been friends since 3rd grade, they kinda know already

 **DD: [voice message]** Fogs says that you are now his cousin Raleigh’s friend from school. She goes to Visions too. Go make friends, she has a crush on you, anyways; it’s cute.

 **S4:** WHAT

 **S2:** GIRL SAVE YOURSELF

 **S4:** YOU ARE SO MEAN

 

 

Peter got home and dutifully informed Ned and MJ that Wade was not dead, although trying very hard to get there. Then he finally broached the question of whether or not they were doing the matchy-matchy thing to Matt’s wedding.

A thoughtful silence fell between all of them.

“I mean. Yeah. We gotta, don’t we? But it’s gonna be so hot,” MJ said, fanning herself with a handful of paperwork from her lockbox-clipboard.

“Yeah,” Ned agreed.

“So presumably we want lighter colors?” Peter offered.

Another pause.

“Michelle, why don’t you pick an outfit and we’ll match you?” Ned said.

“My outfit is a bikini. Tits out in the name of the holy mother,” Michelle decided immediately.

“Peter, why don’t you pick an outfit and we’ll match you?” Ned amended.

“I dunno man, tits out in the name of the holy mother sounds pretty good to me,” Peter thought out loud. “Maybe some tasteful orange shorts.”

Ned groaned into his hands. MJ laid herself out to better fan her pits and chest.

“Fine, but we’re not doing yellow ever again,” Ned decided.

Perfect. Peter couldn’t have agreed more. They determined that Ned would pick a color and submit it to Peter and MJ for interrogation sometime in the next two days.

In the meantime, Peter set about trying to figure out where the fuck he’d hidden his summer Spidey suit. Heat made people bored and stupid. There was always more crime to cut short in summer than the rest of the year and so, even in 90-degree weather, Spiderman needed to be out on the streets. The task for now would be deterring the little guys the best he could and getting folks to services, water, and shade when he wasn’t doing that. When Matt came home, he would definitely want to do a few sweeps of the city before his big day, so Peter could wait a little longer before getting onto that crime-fighting train.

Maybe by then, things will have cooled down a bit.

He found the summer suit stuffed into a box with a sandcastle bucket in it he didn’t remember buying.

 

 

 **S4:** hey Peter

Oh. That wasn’t good.  

Proper names were harbingers of bad-decision-making.

Peter tried to text back as surreptitiously as possible while Mr. Stark ranted about upcoming federal audits and paused every couple of minutes to unstick his shirt from his aloe-smeared back and shoulders.

His sunburn was awe-inspiring. He’d allowed the whole floor to gaze upon its majesty when he’d first stiffly made his way into their weekly team meeting. Mr. Stark’s family was Italian and he tanned very nicely when he tanned, but when he burned he just.

Wow.

To add insult to injury, Ms. Potts had had an _amazing_ sense of humor in full view of her husband’s eventual suffering and had left a pair of her sunglasses on him while he was snoozing on the roof. As such, he had the beautiful pale contour lines of some very stylish shades slapped up against his left shoulder blade.

Ave told him he should get the lines tattooed in before it was too late, and Mr. Stark was unimpressed with her.

Saanvi offered him an icepack to smooth that interaction over. He stuffed it under an armpit and went along his merry way, cursing regulatory bodies and nattering on about what cabinets needed to be unlocked and who was going to be assigned to grant people access to shit. Peter jogged after him and the others at the back of the group with a clipboard, so that he could address his phone.

 

 **SM:** why are you using my name

 **SM:** what is happening what do you want from me why aren’t you in school

 **S4:** can I ask a huge favor???

 **SM:** no go back to class

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : answer the kid. He asked nicely

 **SM:** fuck you, grandpa. go back to sleep

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : is that really how you want to play this, munchkin?

 **SM:** …no

 **SM:** Fine. What is this favor?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : that’s what I fuckin thought

 **S4:** thank you wade

 **S4:** spidey do not laugh at me. Angel you’re not allowed to read this. only people who can read can so go away

 **S4:** so I maybe might have sort of joined Acadec a while back

 **S2:** you fucking nerd

 **S4:** go away only people who can read are allowed to join this convo I literally just said this

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : children you are all going to play nice today you are irritating me

 **S2:** okay sorry wade

 **S4:** sorry wade

 **S4:** okay spidey, so. we’re going to nationals on the 27th and like?? You did Acadec right?

 **SM:** yes

 **SM:** why

 **SM:** why are you asking? I am suspicious. acadec was traumatizing for everyone involved. why did you do that to yourself

 **S2:** why’d you do it then??

 

Mr. Stark emerged from the first stock room waving a hand in the air; he froze in the middle of the doorway to make pained sounds at the stretched skin on his back. Everyone behind him froze, too. And when he recovered, everyone filed out to follow him in the world’s most awkward conga line down the hall to the next one.

Peter turned the lights off in the room once the last person had left and locked the door. He trailed behind the others.

 

 **SM:** because I was a socially awkward nerd who greatly desired friendship. I went towards the home of my people like a naïve moth to a flame.

 **S2:** fair

 **S4:** okay but here’s the thing. We got into nationals but we’re facing off against midtown sci&tech and they got some coaches specifically for nationals and our team isn’t even year old yet so we don’t have any ins with any coaches

 **SM:** I hate where this is going

 **SM:** no

 **SM:** im saying no right now do not involve me in this I am already having flashbacks

 **S2:** y’all are wild. Coaches just for nationals?? When I was in highschool our dragon boat coach just drank heavily and prayed the whole week before regionals. we had to hide her from our principal under the boat

 **S4:** please peter??

 **S4:** our supervisor said we don’t need help but she is wrong and we all know it. we don’t have a chance against MST

 **SM:** okay first of all, that’s bull.

 **SM:** MST is no different from your team. All they got is more rich kids and those guys are too cool for Acadec so you’ll def be competing against fellow scholarship babies who will be just as scrappy and desperate as you guys so don’t even trip.

 **SM:** second of all. You guys don’t need a coach for nationals, you just need to study.

 **SM:** and third of all. Who’d they get to coach?

 **S4:** Okay, 1. Vaguely comforting. 2. Definitely a lie, and 3. idk there’s three. A black guy, a lady with huge glasses and some guy actually literally named Flash

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : peter be kind, be thoughtful, be helpful

 **S4:** ??

 **S3:** hey miles my niece did acadec and her team got to nationals last year, maybe she can help you guys out?

 **S4:** !! That would be great louis thank you!!

 **SM:** hold up. Give me two minutes

Peter turned off the light in stockroom two and nearly locked Bo in there by accident.

**[pparker** has made the group **AcaDec 2017]**

 **[pparker** has added **FlashT, fnRedd, Michellejones, NLeeds, abewarren, jakelee, Yueliu, msolano,** and **SayukiF** to the chat **]**

**abewarren:** heeeeeeey parker what’s up man?? Haven’t heard from you in ages!

 **Michellejones:** im at work. let me out or I’ll murder you

 **[Michellejones** has left the group **]**

 **pparker:** flash I have received intel that you are coaching the MST team for nationals pls confirm or deny immediately

 **abewarren:** holy shit man what’s with the robo voice?

 **abewarren** : and I can confirm, me, flash and Felicia are coaching the team to nationals. They reached out to us like a month ago. Such good kids!!

 **pparker** : thank you abe.

 **FlashT:** damn parker you really went and did that in the middle of the damn day, didn’t you?? Don’t you got a job like the rest of us?

 **pparker** : okay, so just fyi?

 **pparker:** I’m taking Visions Academy and we are going to crush you all into the fucking dust

 **pparker** : k thnx bye nice talking to everyone. good luck losers

 

 

He hastily scribbled down all the notes Saanvi and Himani dictated to him on the clipboard outside stockroom three and then, when they went back to watching Mr. Stark wave at shit in the filing room, went back to his phone.

 **SM:** Miles.

 **S4:** yes?

 **SM:** I will destroy Flash Thompson in every one of his endeavors if it is the last thing I do

 **S4:** um? Okay?

 **S2:** woah

 **SM:** your team will win nationals so help me god

 **S3:** I am sensing some animosity here. Would an older and more knowledgeable party please provide some context?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : flash was peter’s mortal enemy in highschool

 **S4:** oh

 **S4:** actually louis your niece’s number like asap would be great

 **SM:** he hasn’t seen the last of me that motherfucker

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I thought you guys made up

 **SM:** I lied when I said I accepted his apology

 **DD:** good morning is this a battle I smell?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : remember that one kid who pete tried to fight like 6 times in highschool?

 **DD:** yes

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : it’s round 14.

 **DD:** fuck yeah kick his ass kid

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : red no

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : red this is exactly what got pete suspended last time.

 **DD:** NO PRINCIPALS NOW PETER DO YOUR WORST

 **SM:** copy that red I got this

 **S4:** um???? You don’t?? Have to do that???

 **SM:** Hold on imma get michelle she was our captain she smashed flash’s fingers in a door once

 **S2:** bitsy you guys are gonna win so hard its gonna be amazing

 **S4:** i?? Am distressed?????

 

“Hey Peter??”

He stuffed his phone into his breast pocket and tried not to look as manic as he now was.

“Hmm?”

Himani lifted a knowing eyebrow at him while Saanvi cringed a bit.

“Did—did you get that?” Saanvi asked nervously.

“Hm, no. Sorry, can you repeat it?” he asked far too pleasantly.

Himani nodded sagely while Saanvi repeated the directions for him to write into the boxes on the clipboard.

 

 

“Micheeeeeeeelle.”

“Fuck off, Parker.”

“Anything you want. Anything.”

MJ stopped in the hall. Peter had scrambled over the few blocks down to her lab on his lunch break. His SI labcoat was earning him mountains of ire in the sterile hallways. MJ’s peoples’ lab coats had a blue stripe over the pocket and a blue logo on the back. Peter’s red stood out like a sore thumb.

Peter pressed his hands together and executed the puppy eyes.

“Anything,” he whimpered.

MJ evaluated him.

Then sniffed.

“Fine.” She said. Peter fist pumped. Her face did not change. “I reserve the right to call in my ‘anything’ at my convenience.”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Uh-huh. When is their comp?”

“The 27th.”

“The _what?_ ”

“Yep,” Peter confirmed.

“That’s—”

“Right after Matt’s wedding, yes.”

“For fuck’s sake. We only got two weeks?”

He  took her hand and pressed a kiss to the top of the curled fingers and then tucked it into his neck.

“Yes,” he said.

She was charmed. She just didn’t want to admit it. Or look it. Or you know. Radiate it.

It was fine.

“Leave,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

 

One the way back to SI, he nearly got hit by a car while texting.

 **SM:** MJ is on board she wants to know all your practice times and she wants you to double them.

 **S4:** sorry what

 **SM:** you read that right

 **S4:** that’s insane

 **SM:** sorry did you want to win?? Or did you want to come in second like a chump??

 **S3:** oh that’s healthy thinking

 **SM:** silence louis go big or go home. Miles??? Did you want our help or not?

 **S4:** can we…have Mr. Ned’s help instead maybe?

 

Peter shoulder-checked a guy in the lobby and apologized without looking up from his phone.

**[NL added to chat]**

**SM:** ned. Acadec thing. The one MJ is mad about. Tell this child that there are no other options besides double practice and drilling.

 **NL:** I am at work Peter

 

And? As if that stopped anyone in this day and age, come on, man. Do better.

 **SM:** if you can text mj that I’m an idiot at work then you can text us

 **S2:** DAMN

 **NL:** I was texting mj that you’re humanitarian and kind to a fault but okay, I’ll call you an idiot too

 **SM:** thank you I love you SAY THE THING

 **NL:** alright alright. Sorry miles. As much as I would love to tell you that peter and mj are aliens from another planet imitating extreme human behavior, this is kind of how we won nationals for three years running

 **SM:** until flash fucked it up for us that shithead

 **NL:** he literally had appendicitis peter. you and mj need to look at the bigger picture here.

 **SM:** that was not??? Our problem?? He should have said something before we got to DC???

 **NL:** miles I am sorry they are both like this, just do what they tell you

 **S4:** we are so screwed

 

 

Peter finally got back to his office and when he did, he took all of his plans for that evening and dumped them in the trash. New game plan.

  1. Retrieve MJ from work
  2. Check on Wade and the cat
  3. Go to Brooklyn. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars.
  4. Assess the raw material
  5. Strategize



He picked up MJ from work. They went to Wade’s afterwards and found him surrounded by bullets and in a strong cane-shaking mood. He deposited both MJ and Peter right back out on his doorstep and told them to fuck off, he had a job that night.

Peter started to ask what the job was, but the door slammed in his face and he and MJ heard Wade take a call on the other side.

Must have been a big one.

Alright, fine. Have it your way, old man. They were going to Brooklyn.

 

 

Miles’s school was super fancy. The kind of fancy that Peter had always felt uncomfortable with. He was not assured by the flood of uniforms all over the place and given the grip MJ was executing on his elbow, neither was she. They found a safe spot outside the school’s fence and Peter called Miles to come rescue them from the hoard.

Miles asked his teacher while he was still on the line what Peter and MJ had to do to get in and she told them to go to the office to get visitor badges, which they did because neither wanted to be arrested before Matt and Fogs and Kirsten got back into town.

MJ pinned her visitor badge on and then spent an irritable couple of seconds adjusting Peter’s until she decided that they could be seen together. It was hot as hell, even inside the school, and Peter felt like he was melting in his jeans. He had to take his jacket off, he just couldn’t cope. MJ followed suit while they waited for Miles to pop his head into the office and greet them.

He looked so much younger in his school uniform than Peter had expected.

“You look like a square,” Peter dutifully informed the kid as he led them through the maze of boiling hallways back to the no doubt oven-like classroom he and his team were studying in.

“You look like a _tall_ square,” Miles shot back. “Don’t be weird.”

Psh.

Don’t be weird. As if Peter could ever out-weird a room full of AcaDec nerds.

 

 

Miles opened the door to a load of uniform-wearing kids crowded around the tables of a pretty nice highschool chemistry lab. The teacher behind the desk at the front of the room seemed very normal. A little older than Peter and MJ, but not by much. Peter wanted to know how she was not suffocating in that knee-length skirt.

“Hi,” MJ said for them both. “We’re the coaches.”

“It’s great to meet you,” Mrs…Jackson?--That was what the cheery shit on the walls seemed to imply her name was—said. “Miles told us all about you two, and we’re really glad that you decided to step in so last minute.”

Oho, lady. Just wait ‘til you leave. These children were going to want to murder them both by the next hour.

 

 

The children definitely wanted to murder them and it had only been thirty minutes. It was long enough to see that the reason that they had done so well so far was because they, like Miles, were all stupendously intelligent.

But intelligence did not champions make.

Alone anyways.

Hard work, practice, and an actual understanding of the material was what was going to win these kids nationals. MJ sat on the front desk of the room and told them this with steely eyes.

They were all properly intimidated.

“Get into groups,” MJ said, “We’re gonna play Hot Potato.”

 

 

Hot Potato was the bane of their old Acadec team’s existence. Hot Potato involved a timer and three lists of questions, one list for easy questions, one list for medium-difficulty questions, and one list for hard ones.

You had fifteen seconds to answer a question and then pass a potato (paperclip, book, ball, whatever) to the next person so that they could then answer a question in fifteen seconds. Failure to answer in that time meant that you had to drop the potato and you had twenty seconds to pick it back up by answering a medium question. If you lost that, then you better damn believe that you were getting thirty seconds to answer a hard question and failure to answer _that_ resulted in being handed a binder and told to go study, kid.

Peter let MJ be the bad cop. These kids’ supervisor was kind of hands-off. They weren’t used to the intensity or discipline of Hot Potato. Especially when you got to the lightening rounds and all time allotments were halved. When the kids inevitably dropped the hottest and hardest potato, they were relegated to Peter’s corner and Peter was the one who did the sympathetic patting and question asking and reviewing until they got the concept thoroughly enough that they could repeat it back to him. And then he sent them back into the fray.

Mr. Harrington had come up with Hot Potato. He was kind of a sadistic bastard under his unflappable exterior, and had, their team had decided, enjoyed watching the panic in children’s eyes as their intelligence failed them.

He’d engineered that situation so that the team captain was always the bad guy, though, so that he would be the gentle encourager and supporter on the side. Absolutely to trick his students into forgetting that he was the one who had condemned them to this particular level of hell to begin with. It worked every time. Only after they’d graduated did Peter, Ned, and MJ realize just how badly they’d all been played.

Miles’s fledgling Acadec team fucking hated Hot Potato, which was the point. And then they hated MJ’s rendition of the card game War which tainted all momentary victories with having to answer a question correctly or being forced to forfeit cards to the opponent to your right.

Then they got a break and they all abandoned the classroom to discuss how much they despised the new coaches.

Peter stepped out to go figure out how the vending machine outside the cafeteria worked. Miles popped up at his elbow while he was trying to decide telepathically if MJ would prefer a 7-Up or the weird fruit smoothie thing the machine was crammed full of.

“That was fun,” Miles said. Peter almost flinched away from him.

“Fun?” he demanded. “It’s not supposed to be fun.”

Miles cocked his head.

“It’s fun,” he said. “We usually just sit and read a lot and then simulate the competition.”

“God, talk about painful,” Peter said. He decided that they’d earned soda and typed the 7-Up number into the vending machine’s keypad. He bought three cans.

“You guys are good teachers,” Miles said.

Peter looked at the kid.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Miles beamed at him.

“Nothin’.”

“Lies. What do you want?”

“You’re just funny, sometimes, Spidey. That’s all, for real. Itsy told me his Peter is hilarious and really bad at being a person in general. He told me to stop taking myself so seriously, I guess. So yeah. You’re kind of funny sometimes, am I allowed to say that?”

So Miles was still in touch with the alternate-Miles then.

“No,” Peter said, shoving one of the soda cans against the back of Miles’s neck to make him shriek. “I am the fun police. No fun allowed. It has been decreed.”

Miles flinched away and pouted at him.

“This is police brutality,” he snapped.

“ _You’re_ police brutality.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Snap to it, underling. Chop, chop. We have nationals to win.”

He waited until they were all back inside before leaving the last soda can with Miles at his desk.

Miles got an A+ for trusting him. Asking for help when he needed it deserved positive reinforcement.

 

 

 


	5. fan people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If they do good shit, we’ll get them Otter Pops,” MJ decided.

The next day saw a repeat of the previous one except with more audit preparations, greater external temperature, and Peter running into his new favorite moron of the month.

This moron had declared himself Slimeman and was operating under the impression that that was a cool name. He informed Peter with wavy arms that Slimeman was going to be the next Slenderman and Peter had to stand there and experience that shit in actual real life.

Slimeman told Peter that he was going to dump chemicals into the already stinking and putrid river so that it would turn into—you guessed it—slime.

Dave arrived on the scene and stood beside Peter in awe at this person.

“Should we call an ambulance?” he asked Peter.

Mmm. No. Guy seemed perfectly aware of what he was doing. And from what Peter could tell, the thing he was waving around, threatening people with was a little pot of Gak Slime. Peter rested a couple knuckles against his lips through the mask.

Maybe Slimeman had heatstroke? He asked Dave what he thought.

Dave said there was only one way to find out.

They dunked him in the river to see.

It did not turn to slime as he claimed it would and nor did he, although he did do some pretty great gagging and swearing once they fished him back out to check for further mania.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Slimeman accused them. Then he gasped as he looked over to his hand and realized that he’d forfeited his slime to the river gods. Man was devastated. Tried to jump back in to go get it and that was when Peter and Dave decided that enough was enough. They dragged him away from the river and bought him a slurpee and sat with him on the curb until he’d settled down a bit.

Dave took him off Peter’s hands and guided him back home to sit in embarrassment and shame.

 

 

 **DD:** hi I need someone to please call my husband

 **S2:** ??

 **S2:** did you lose him?

 **DD:** no but I might soon

 **SM:** !!! Are you guys okay? Isn’t your flight soon??

 **DD:** yes.

 **S2:** you’re at the airport then?

 **DD:** yes

 **SM:** I don’t get it DD, give more context before I call

 **DD:** need a distraction so he does not maim anyone in our party

 **S4:** party?

 **SM:** party?

 **S2:** jinx y’all. You owe me a coke

 **SM:** wait how many people are on this flight

 **DD:** the people are not the problem.

Ah.

 **SM:** calling.

 

 

“Peter, I am not especially in the mood right now,” Foggy said after the fourth ring.

“Tell me about the dog,” Peter said. “Let it all out.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Alright, you know what? Just let me fucking say that I _said_ she wouldn’t travel well.”

Peter propped his chin on his hand and started doodling on a corner of his latest supply request. He’d be here a minute. Fogs had a lot of feelings.

 

 

He went to collect MJ after work and the two of them decided mutually that it was too hot to exist and the fact that the Vision kids had to wear uniforms in this godforsaken weather was a cruel and unusual punishment.

“If they do good shit, we’ll get them Otter Pops,” MJ decided.

“Good plan. One problem,” Peter said. “Otter pops require cooler climes.”

MJ considered this.

“Tell Cap we’re borrowing his freezer.”

Roger that.

 

 

They had to jump off the train a few stops early to purchase a pack of ice sticks and by then, Cap wrote back saying that that was fine, but also, like. Why?

“Tiny geniuses,” Peter texted.

Cap did not question this further.

 

 

Miles and his team were grumpy and unmotivated about day two of training. They did worse than the day before. Peter sighed and then MJ sighed and the whole team went quiet and jerked their heads between the two of them in anxiety.

“Bummer,” MJ said.

“Right? All that trouble,” Peter replied.

“We even got Captain America for the history portion.”

“I know. If _only_ we could see some effort.”

Silence.

“You guys got _Captain America_ to help us with the history portion?” Miles’s best buddy piped up in awe. Peter sniffed. MJ shrugged.

“What, like it’s hard?” she asked.

The room exploded.

Momentum relocated.

 

 

Cap was iffy on kids. Cap spent a whole lot of time pretending that he liked kids. The real kid-magnet in the Cap household was Barnes, though, and then the real teenage-magnet was Wilson. Steve was a hermit who genuinely liked maybe five children in the whole of New York. But Steve liked Miles—was trying to fucking steal Miles from Peter’s tutelage—and so Steve was willing to put up with a load of teenagers in his house in the name of solidifying Miles’s favor and in the name of helping a load of kids from the community.

That said, he wasn’t there when Peter and MJ led the hoard to his door. Barnes opened it with his hair stuffed into a messy bun at the back of his neck and one arm. The metal one seemed to have been sacrificed to the weather gods. He scrutinized them all in silence and the kids settled down to hide behind Peter and MJ and stare back.

“Baby geniuses?” Barnes asked Peter.

“Yep.”

“Alright, you may pass.” Barnes stood out of the doorway and the shock to the Vision team was written all over their faces. “Hurry up, then,” Barnes barked. “Ruinin’ my damn cross breeze.”

There was a small moment of chaos where everyone took off their shoes at the same time and then they were all ushered into the plant-filled archive that was the Cap residence.

 

 

The kids were fascinated at Barnes’s crawling horticulture project. And his enormous huge-leafed project right by the stairs. And the series of glass jars in the dining room window that he appeared to be experimenting with hydroponics in.

“Stevie went and got one of them damn angry fish and then decided that he couldn’t fuckin’ bear for it to be lonely and so went and got another,” he pronounced when Kailee and her twin Lily asked him why there was no soil in these jars sprouting foliage. “But it turns out them things are about as social as the fuckin’ Punisher, so we had to get ‘em different jars so they’d stop trying to play the deadliest catch.”

The kids decided that he was hilarious. They burst into two thousand questions for him which Barnes handled by saying, “Hey, pipe down, y’all. We got fuckin’ neighbors. And lose the jackets, god, you’re makin’ me hot just lookin’ at youse.”

Peter and MJ moved practice to the Cap living room, devoid of electronics (except for a lone tablet set on the mantle by a picture of Wilson and his old air force partner). Barnes came in and parked himself on the arm of one of the sofas to observe. And it was as though everyone’s Brooklyn accents had intensified simply by being in his presence. Peter and MJ announced that if the kids did not drop the potato in front of the current national icon, there would be icy rewards afterwards.

The potato was fumbled but not dropped.

Barnes whistled, impressed, and Peter had never seen so much pride contained in one room.

Barnes decided that this was worthy of sugar ice and went to go fetch the Otter Pops from the freezer when the door opened and Steve himself stepped in, soaked from head to toe in something mysterious and…sticky-looking. Barnes’s first reaction to this was “Get OUT of my HOUSE.”

“It’s petroleum jelly,” Cap said over him.

“OUT. I will spray you off on the lawn, don’t be touching my goddamn house. I just fuckin’ cleaned.”

“Buck—”

“OUT, DEMON. BE GONE WIT YE.”

The kids were enraptured. Cap stared heavenwards and did an about face back into the heat. Barnes pointed a finger at everyone else and said he’d just be a second.

They all heard the tell-tale sound of water blasting against wet clothing a moment later.

“This is the best day of my life,” Miles’s teammate Ernesta (or, ‘Ernie’ as everyone called her) told Peter.

“No,” he said, “The day you win nationals will be. Eyes on the prize, kiddo.”

 

 

When Cap was finally allowed entry into his own home, he addressed the kids properly and waved stiffly—mostly because Barnes had styled him to be more towel than person, and said he’d be right back down. Barnes practically walked on his heels up the stairs. When he came back down a few minutes later, he distributed sweet ice and then, when Cap came back down in an outrageous outfit like Barnes, a work-out tee with its sides ripped almost down to the hem and athletic tights, he joined these proceedings and then asked the kids to see that they had.

The potato didn’t so much as waver this time.

MJ grinned at Peter over her neon blue ice stick.

Progress made.

 

 

“We’re the coolest coaches,” MJ informed him on the train.

“Duh,” Peter told her.

 

 

 **DD:** hi this is foggy who are we meeting at the airport again?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : me I’m 10 min out

 **DD:** right thank you. no rush, tho. Sam is sick so we’re gonna be a minute

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : sam??

 **SM:** sam?

 **S2:** ??

 **DD:** did matt not tell you about sam?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : no he def did

 **S2:** aw yeah, Sam, our best buddy sam. Very sam-like. We love that guy.

 **S4:** who’s sam?

 **SM:** that guy we know, Miles? Remember????

 **D2:** what is happening

 **DD:** I am going to have a fucking aneurysm

 **SM:** great so we’ll see you guys at Santiago’s at eight?

 

 

Santiago’s had outdoor seating and the number of dogs with loads of fur in the new and improved party mandated outdoor seating. Miles said that he couldn’t come, his mom was expecting him for dinner at six and Louis said that he was working late and so had to pass. Dave moaned something about a late evening class he had to teach since it was too hot for people to work out during the day. Angel said nothing to no one. She had finals.

That left Peter and his boos to meet up with the Daredevil team and Wade in Hell’s Kitchen. Ned met he and MJ in Midtown and headed northwest with them towards Karen’s place.

 

 

They got to Karen’s complex with a few minutes to spare and headed up to knock on her door. She answered almost immediately and besieged them all with hugs and demands to know why the fuck no one talked to her these days.

The honest answer was that Castle had put out a blanket threat on anyone who got her mixed up in their business that summer.

The lie they told her was that things were just so busy at work, Kare. No one was going out much these days.

She didn’t believe them but she ushered them in all the same.

 

 

The clatter of nails on hardwood crashed into the kitchen before they could even truly step in. Hazel was stoked to see him. And stoked to bark at Ned like she’d never met him in her life. Karen scolded her and reminded her that this was not, in fact, the case. She acquiesced with Karen’s hand buried in her collar and wagged her tail at Ned, pleased with herself, before a whistle sounded from the living room. She threw herself out of Karen’s grip and went bounding that way.

They all heard Matt’s hushed order for her to ‘settle’ in the other room.

“Someone puked on the plane,” Karen told them conspiratorially as they made their way into her green and yellow living room. It was cozy in winter but, goddamn. The place had obviously not been built for summer. Not even with all the windows open.

Peter saw Foggy first, hair twisted up into a mini blond version of Barnes’s messy bun, leaning over Tuesday, telling her very pointedly how good of a girl she was. Poor Tues stayed flattened to the hardwood, sad and seeking coolness from the floor. Foggy noticed Peter and stood up for a hug.

“Looking good, Foggy,” Peter told him once they separated.

Good was kind. Fogs looked tired as hell around the eyes.

“Only looking,” he sighed. Peter turned and noted that Matt had not gotten off the floor. For a second he almost antagonized him for his old-ass bones, but then he saw that there was someone draped over his lap, very much having a hard time.

“Hey, Pete,” Matt said, offering his knuckles for a fist bump without pausing in gently stroking this mysterious person’s hair.

Was it Kirsten?

No, Kirsten and Wade had just opened the door and set Hazel off again.

He met Matt’s knuckles with his own and MJ made an interested sound.

“A friend?” she asked, leaning over the back of the couch for a better vantage point. Matt hummed.

“We are being quiet right now,” he said.

Foggy gave him a filthy look.

Ah.

“So this is Sam,” Peter said.

“This is Sam,” Matt confirmed.

“I am Sam,” the poor person creaked out miserably from Matt’s lap.

“We now know that Sam gets motion sickness on planes,” Matt observed evenly.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Sam half-sobbed into Matt’s hip. Matt petted him sympathetically.

Aw. Poor guy.

“Between Sam and Haze, we were the in-flight entertainment,” Kirsten noted. She had acquired a bottle of ginger ale which she pressed against the back of Sam’s neck. He did not move.

Yikes.

“ _We_ were the in-flight entertainment,” Foggy sighed, massaging his temples, “ _You_ abandoned us.”

“I told you I would,” Kirsten said. “I told you before we left that I was bringing the sunglasses for this exact reason. You’re just pissed that you didn’t think of it first.”

Foggy set his jaw at her. She smiled beatifically.

“So, pizza?” Karen asked the group.

 

 

Sam did not want to go. Sam wanted to sleep on Karen’s floor with Tuesday, but Matt didn’t let him.

“I need a guide,” he lied, hauling Sam up off the floor against his will. The guy wasn’t very big. Maybe a few inches shorter than Peter, with  dark hair and sad, forlorn dark eyes.

“Use Hazel,” Sam pleaded.

“No, she’s done enough for today.”

“So have I.”

“Samuel.”

Ooh. The way Matt said his name was a little mom-like. Peter was intrigued.

“I don’t _feel good_ ,” Sam whined.

“Great, you can not feel good at the restaurant,” Matt said.

“UGH. It’s like you don’t even care.”

“I have cared for the last hour, that’s plenty of caring. Up. Liquids. Calories. You’ll feel better.”

Sam stared pleadingly at Foggy, who sucked in a breath and then sighed.

“You’re not gonna feel better here, bud,” he said. “It’s cooler outside. Come on, if you still feel like shit after some food then you can come back and sleep. It’s not far.”

Sam was displeased. He hunkered down and hugged Tuesday.

“You’re the only one who understands, Tues,” he murmured to her. She turned and licked his face before re-sprawling.

Matt shook his head.

“Samuel,” he repeated in his mom-voice.

“I’m _coming_ , god.”

 

 

Sam was.

Well.

Peter wasn’t quite sure what Sam was. What he did know is that Matt held his arm while they walked instead of Foggy’s. Foggy seemed chill with this as he was busy reading his mom’s highly anxious text messages out to Karen.

“She wants to know how many flowers we ordered,” he grumbled. “Like I didn’t tell her this yesterday. Like we didn’t have this exactly conversation in verbal form yesterday. I shouldn’t need to document my interactions with my mother.”

“She’s just excited,” Karen soothed.

“More like neurotic. I am _this close_ to paying Candace to slip something into her drink.”

“Foggy, that’s your mom.”

“She needs a nap.”

“Your mom, man.”

“No, she’s Matt’s mom. She likes him best. Matthew, I’m going to drug your mother.”

“I’m sure she’d love a day off from the kids,” Matt said offhandedly, steering Sam more than Sam was steering him. It was dark enough that no one would notice.

Probably.

They got inside Santiago’s and then promptly went back outside to sit around one of the patio tables. Wade convinced Hazel to stop choking herself trying to get back to her usual place at Matt’s left side with a stolen piece of cheese. Then he had to leave them for a second to go steal another piece from the salad bar for Tuesday.

Tuesday licked at the proffered cheese listlessly.

Peter cooed at her. Their server cooed at her when she came around with drinks and then she cooed at Sam who appeared to have said ‘fuck this, fuck y’all, I’m having my goddamn nap’ and had leaned his head up against Matt’s shoulder.

When he seemed mostly asleep, Wade did the honors of pointing at him and making big shrugging hands. Matt sucked in a big breath and then sighed.

“Sam’s my—I don’t even know, what are we calling him, Kirsten?”

“Accomplice,” Kirsten said.

“Paralegal,” Foggy corrected.

“Paralegal-accomplice,” Kirsten decided.

“He came and found me,” Matt explained. “Asked for training, and I couldn’t fuckin’ shake him so I guess he’s ours now.”

“Training?” Ned asked. “As in legal training?”

There was a pregnant pause at the table.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just had to ask,” Ned said.

“What’s he do?” Peter asked, peeking around Matt to examine his…brother? What was he? Was a Matt-accomplice his vigilante-sibling?

“We call him Blindspot,” Matt said.

Wade snorted into his coke and then choked.

“He’s made an invisibility suit,” Matt said.

The choking settled somewhat.

“Sorry, what?” Peter said.

“You heard me. Made a suit. Wants to fight. Came to me all the way across country for training, what was I supposed to do? Throw him back on his ass?”

“Yes,” Wade said. “That’s kind of how you do things, Red.”

Matt conceded the point with a wave.

“Normally, yes,” he said. “But Sam risked more than most coming out to find me and he’s a brilliant kid.”

Peter frowned and waited until the table next to them left. Then he waited until their server had finished setting down food and stepped off before asking, “Are you replacing Dave, man?”

“What? No, of course not,” Matt said. He began methodically peeling pepperoni off his slices of pizza to stack onto the edge of Foggy’s plate. They never let Matt order pizza for the group because he always put broccoli and other forbidden green shit on it. Foggy gave the pepperoni Wade to feed to Haze and Tues under the table.

“Sam is Blindspot, not Daredevil,” Matt said with finality. He grabbed a slice of the sausage pizza and woke up his accomplice (apprentice? What was he, for real?) by shoving it at his arm. Sam blinked himself awake and took the slice without comment. He put it on his plate and picked at it with little interest.

Probably still feeling a little queasy.

Peter felt bad for him.

 

 

Matt and Foggy said that they had to go do some wedding shit involving tablecloths and chairs and an interpreter for a handful of deaf guests the next day. Peter asked if there was anything they could do to help and Matt and Foggy thought about it for a moment before Kirsten came through, fully prepared, with a list of shit on her phone.

“Foggy’s mom and sister are doing the chairs for the reception,” she said, “And then his—are they your cousins or nieces, Foggy?”

“Which ones?”

“The ones who claimed the catering.”

“Cousins.”

“Foggy’s cousins are doing the plates and tableware. And I think your dad wanted to do the—”

“Tables,” Foggy sighed. “And the lighting for the reception. And whatever the fuck arch he’s got it into his head we need.”

Matt seemed charmed. Peter was starting to see a trend here.

“Your folks sure like a party, huh, Fogs?” he asked.

“My great-aunt Betty has flown in from Minnesota, Peter. She is 96. ‘Like’ is an understatement.”

“You guys can help with the favors if you really want something to do,” Matt said kindly. “We were going to make them, but Kirsten has decided that we need to involve my mother.”

Kirsten held her chin up, waiting for a challenge.

“She has talents,” she said.

“She has 30 kids to look after,” Matt noted.

“She should abuse her position. It’s not child labor if no one hears of it.”

Matt directed a flat look her way and then the same back at Peter.

“My mother is overwhelmed,” he said. “If you guys could help her with that, I think she’d appreciate it.”

“Good overwhelmed?” MJ asked him.

Matt winced thinking about it. He jostled Sam so that he didn’t eat shit on the curb.

“I don’t know either way. I think she’s been overwhelmed for the last forty years if I’m honest.”

Peter had only met Matt’s mom once. She was very…intense. Peter wouldn’t have thought the two of them were related if Wade hadn’t told him otherwise. Once you knew, it was pretty obvious, but evidently the whole thing was painful for both her and Matt. They didn’t seem to talk about it much. At least not in front of people.

Peter wondered if she was happy with Foggy as her son-in-law. Finally, someone with the capacity to have and express feelings to stand in between her and her son.

“Of course we can do that,” he said. “What day do you need us?”

“Probably Sunday night?”

They promised they’d be there. Then they all split off for home.

 

 

 **S2:** hi so who is this sam who we know?

 **S4:** we don’t know a sam

 **S2:** bitsy I am making a joke

 **S4:** you’re not good at it you should stop

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : he is replacement Dave

 **D2:** WHAT

 **SM:** he is not replacement Dave

 **D2:** WHAT DID I DO WRONG????

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : existed

 **SM:** wade be nice. He’s DD’s

 **SM:** I don’t even fucking know. They called him a paralegal-accomplice

 **S4:** what

 **S2:** so like a PA?

 **S3:** got the first part. The second part, not so much. Why accomplice?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : because he’s replacing dave listen when people talk to you

 **D2:** I am stressing the fuck out

 **D2:** is he or is he not replacing me?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : he is

 **SM:** he’s NOT. Wade, stop.

 **DD:** Sam is my apprentice for the time being.

 **D2:** What does that mean???

 **DD:** it means that he is my student and I pay him for putting up with me and doing research and paperwork.

 **S2:** so like a PA.

 **DD:** sure.

 **S2:** you’re so fancy DD. One day I’m gonna have a PA.

 **DD:** are you now?

 **S2:** yeah, she’s gonna be my personal fan lady. She will fan me with big leaves wherever I go

 **DD:** why a she? Why not a he?

 **S2:** because fan boys are trash

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : HA

 **S2:** thank you I’m here all week

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me and my partner have just started wedding planning y'all.  
> my little sis made us a pinterest board  
> I do not understand this culture but i'm in the shit now i guess
> 
> Anyways, Sam is Samuel Chung! AKA Blindspot. You can read about him here: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Samuel_Chung_(Earth-616)  
> (Obvs my Sam is gonna be a little different since he had to go out to SF to find Matt, but we're bringing Sam into the fold!)
> 
> And as a note for non-US folks, Otter pops are these things: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZPL7NWVwAEzL0t.jpg  
> they're like frozen sugar syrup and so painfully cheap and so painfully good


	6. consider the ficus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DD: peter what have you done?
> 
> Peter had no idea what he was talking about. He was innocently riding this train back to his innocent apartment where there was not so much as a single flicker of guilt in sight. 
> 
> DD: Sam will not fucking stop talking about figs what have you done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: 
> 
> If you are weirded out about plants, bugs, and/or do not like the idea of fruits containing bits of insects, go ahead and skip section 2 of the texting sequence (the bit right after Peter and Karen's exchange). 
> 
> I have warned you all. Do not say I did not warn you all. 
> 
> also the link in this does lead to the relevant music if you care about that kind of thing.

Thursday morning saw Peter staring at an auditor who was adamant that there was a lock violation going on in stockroom number 2.

Peter shuffled his gaze between this man and his clipboard and the collection of shit he had amassed in his hands over the last fifteen minutes. He didn’t know how many times he could explain the cabinets’ automatic locking mechanism to this man before his own head exploded. He’d tried demonstrating, then he’d tried letting the guy have a go for himself, and then he’d broken out the blueprints of the device and their patent to show how these locks were, in fact, even more secure than your typical keyed lock.

But alas.

This guy was a brick wall. As in, as dense as.

“You know what?” Peter said, “Let me go get my department lead.”

“You do that,” Mr. Clipboard sniffed.

You do that.

Oh, Peter was gonna do _something_.

He hunted down Dr. Siemons, the head of the bio-structures department and she gaped at him for a solid five seconds before unearthing a groan from the very base of her soul.

“Is it Tim?” She asked, “Please tell me it’s not Tim.”

Peter didn’t know. He hadn’t exactly been focused on the guy’s name tag.

Dr. Siemons groaned again, with a hint more ‘oomph’ this time, then downed tools and goggles to waddle her giant pregnant belly towards the corridor to go deal with this sentient headache. Peter tailed her because he could not be convinced by anyone in this building that she was not constantly five minutes from giving birth in a hallway.

 

 

The man’s name was, in fact, Tim.

And Dr. Siemons’s assessment of him involved calling him only by his first name while making direct eye contact and rubbing circles against her unborn child.

She asked Tim very pointedly if they were gonna have to do this like they’d done it the year previous and Peter got the feeling that there was a feud here that he’d accidentally stepped into.

At the auditor’s stammering, Dr. Siemons hummed and told Peter to be a dear and go inform Mr. Stark that their dear pal Timothy was back for round three.

 

 

“Fucking Tim,” Mr. Stark growled when Peter passed this information on.

He took off his shoes and stomped over to the little space which he’d given over to Colonel Rhodes to use to experiment with his new-found delight in low-light greenery. Colonel Rhodes had, on a field trip to some unknowable air force base in the desert, witnessed UV lamps being used in a basement and had since developed many questions about their viability in terms of creating underground green spaces. His current military job was not so keen on him pursuing these lines of inquiry in the office in DC given that it was kind of, well. A colonel’s office. Mr. Stark on the other hand, was thrilled that his bestie was rekindling his scientific nature, and so had offered him a lab space which he had promptly rejected.

Colonel Rhodes was a do-it-yourself kind of guy. He’d hunted out the most inconvenient corner in the whole lab and set up his little operation there, apparently with the intention to annoy Tony as much as Tony annoyed him.

He’d covered his little alcove in tarps and scrap-wood to incite maximum frustration from Tony and his crusade for minimalism and symmetry.

Peter sometimes imagined their relationship as the weird double-headed llama creature from Dr. Doolittle.

He watched as Mr. Stark swept back the veil and then returned from the In-Between with one of Colonel Rhodes’s enormous, beloved potted ficus plants in his arms. He told Peter that he’d handle it.

 

 

Peter didn’t know what happened next in the stockroom, but shortly after being dismissed to return back to his office, Mr. Stark and his bare toes slapped past the doorway back towards the elevator with the plant still in his arms and an air of triumph. Peter leaned over in his chair to watch him go. He then caught the tail end of Dr. Siemons thanking the auditor for his understanding in the hall.

It was not the strangest thing that Peter had not-quite witnessed at Stark Industries.

There were just some things you didn’t question.

He went back to his emails but couldn’t quite shake the intrigue.

 

 

He stopped by Ned’s place after work on his way over to MJ’s to pick her up for Acadec practice, as she’d had the day off and was allegedly preparing a (probably horrible) surprise for their small herd of children. Ned had given him a key ages back and its application revealed, as Peter had suspected, all the lights on in the place, with a few extra ones directed at the table. The table was covered in gadgets Peter intuitively knew he was not allowed to touch or ask questions about. It was always covered in things Peter was not allowed to touch or ask questions about, but this particular arrangement of forbidden objects was very shiny. A little iridescent.

The man of the hour emerged from his bedroom as though telepathic, and, while on the phone to someone apparently more important than Peter, plucked the funny flat-shaped hexagon Peter was investigating right out of his hand. He replaced it in its proper place on the table and then threw a sheet from the couch over the whole table itself because he did not trust Peter as far as he could throw him, which, admittedly, was not very far. This fun having been ruthlessly taken away, Peter waited until Ned’s affirmations to his supervisor had died off and the phone had been set face-down on the counter before asking Ned if he’d ever considered a potted plant to be a threat.

Ned stared at him in wonder.

They then spent half an hour googling it and getting nowhere.

“Maybe this guy’s got a very specific phobia,” Ned offered.

“A ficus phobia,” Peter said.

“A ficus phobia,” Ned agreed. “Maybe he illegally smuggled ficus plants over the border as a youth and now has ficus-related trauma. Maybe he served time for ficus-related crimes.”

Oh.

Now that’s what Peter was talking about.

Creative crime was his favorite kind.

“Hypothetically,” he said, “If I wanted to smuggle a ficus into the United States, how would I do it?”

Ned stared at him for another long moment.

“Peter,” he said lovingly, “I have work to do.”

Alright, fine. Point taken. Exit imminent.

 

 

MJ stared at him like he was trying to use a rock as a fork when he smoothly posed the question to her while she was locking her apartment door.

“You are aware that ficus trees are mostly just figs, right?” she said.

Well, he was now.

“Listen. Just don’t talk in front of the kids today, alright?”

Mmmmm, but like, was that a request or an order?

 

 

“What’s a ficus?” Miles asked him two hours later, swinging his feet off the edge of one of desks in the Acadec classroom. He and his buddies had done alright so far that day. They had survived MJ’s horrible surprise of high-stakes historical Cluedo and so MJ had decided that they were allowed a fifteen minute break before they did a simulation of nationals.

“It’s a fig tree,” Peter told him.

“Why’re you thinking about figs?” Kailee asked him over the lip of her soda can.

“It’s called ‘fixating,’” Peter informed her.

“Oh, I do that,” Tobias piped in.

“Do you?” Miles asked him while Ganke drew a fantastically accurate portrait of him as Spiderman, to the others’ complete and total lack of interest. He gave 2-D Bitsy-Miles bat wings to emphasize his whole nocturnal situation. Peter approved.

“Yeah, for sure,” Tobias said, “Like, my cousin was telling me about snails, right? ‘Cause he’s got insomnia and he keeps watching Planet Earth at night. And so he was telling me that this one kind was super cool, so I looked ‘em up and there’s this one snail that can like, kill you with one bite.”

What.

Snails had teeth?

“I dunno, but this snail has at least one big one. And he throws it out there and then Bam! You’re dead. Snail wipeout,” Tobias said with a slicing hand gesture.

What.

No.

That.

What.

“Okay, but do _all_ snails bite?” Kailee said.

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Well I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Peter said.

 

 

MJ came back in and all ten kids screamed and scurried out of the far corner of the room to hide behind her, all talking at once and generally kicking up an unnecessary fuss. She blinked in shock and then looked over at Peter and his newly captured garden friend.

“You had one job,” she said.  

She stuck him in a corner as punishment and made him ask the wedding folks if they needed any assistance that night.

 

 

 **KP:** no we’re cool unless you know a family counselor

 **PP:** ???

 **KP:** foggy’s dad made a wedding arch

 **PP:** and?

 **KP:** hideous the kindest adjective I can think of at the moment to describe it

 **KP:** but he’s so proud of himself

 **KP:** This is the second one he’s made

 **PP:** yikes

 **KP:** yeah the dogs fucking hate it. He put a pic of Matt and Fogs on it from like college and they’re losing their shit. Sam’s terrified of Foggy’s dad for some reason too, so that’s fun.

 **PP:** why??

 **KP:** idk according to Matt he’s got a thing about artists at the minute

Huh. Interesting.

 **PP:** yes, but how does he feel about ficus?

 **KP:** ??? I can ask him??

 

 

 **DD:** peter what have you done?

Peter had no idea what he was talking about. He was innocently riding this train back to his innocent apartment where there was not so much as a single flicker of guilt in sight.

 **DD:** Sam will not fucking stop talking about figs what have you done

 **DD:** do you know how much this kid knows about figs?

 **DD:** because I do now. And I hate it.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : SPEAKING of plants does anyone know how much catnip one can consume without consequences???

 **S2:** oh my god wade did you smoke it???

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I would never

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : not do that. I’m gonna fucking puke

 **S2:** lol you dumbass if you’re gonna ingest it you gotta make tea out of it that’s what the gals at work say

 **S4:** you can eat catnip???

 **DD:** everyone shut the fuck up I’m talking to Peter.

 **DD:** Peter.

 **DD: [voice message]** I need you to tell this boy that you’re a fucking idiot who is riling him up for your own entertainment.

 **DD: [voice message]** You have 20 seconds, failure will result in me hiding your body in the Botanical Gardens up north out of poetic justice. Ready, go.

 **SM:** k

 **SM:** add him to the chat

 **[DD** has added **BT** to the chat **]**

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : guys good news

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I puked

 **SM:** good job wade. Handled it like a champ

 **BT:** Hi!!

 **DD:** you are not here for cheer you are here for amended behavior

 **BT:** Spidey were you the one asking Ms Page about ficus plants earlier??

 **SM:** yah

 **SM:** tell me everything you know about them

 **DD:** peter no

 **BT:** there are 850 different types of fig trees :D

 **SM:** oh my god say more

 **BT:** fig trees produce latex

 **SM:** yesssss

 **BT:** some of this latex was used in the construction of mummy caskets in ancient Egypt

 **BT:** figs are some of the earliest known cultivated plants of mankind

 **BT:** they’re believed to pre-date even grain in some places

 **S2:** holy fuck we found a guy almost as nerdy as Bitsy

 **BT:** k so also there’s this wasp

 **DD:** alright, you’re done. I’m coming home.

 **SM:** sam I love you come out on a job with us

 **BT:** !!!!

 **BT:** DD?????

 **BT:** please??? I’ll be good??? No wasps, I’ll never tell anyone about the wasps ever again I promise.

 **BT:** please??????

 **SM:** please DD!!! Let us make FRIENDS

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : looked up the wasp thing

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : puked again. cannot deal. -2/10 someone help

 **S2:** OH MY FUCKING GOD????

 **S2:** THE WASPS ARE IN???

 **DD: [voice message]** Do you see what  you’ve done, Samuel? No. You had your chance. When I get in, we are going to meet Frank.

 **BT:**  I’M SORRY I TAKE IT BACK NO WASPS I EDITTED THE WIKI PAGE SEE?? NO WASPS **[link]**

 **BT:** I’VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF FIGS. FUCK, WHAT ARE THOSE???

 **SM:** oh my god you’re my soulmate

 **S3:** guys I am so distressed my mom loves figs

 **BT:** I will be on my best behavior DD, I will not embarrass you, I promise!!

 **SM:** Red let him join us I love him already you can’t deny our love

 **S2:** <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5GGMhmo-M>

**S3:** ANGEL FOR FUCKS SAKE ITS IN MY HEAD NOW

 **DD:**  for the love of god. Okay. Fine. You may come. On one condition.

 **BT:** !!!!!

 **BT:** okay??? What is it? I’ll do it, no problem!

 **DD:** yeah you hold that thought

 **SM:** So we’ll see you two at 10 then?

 **BT:** YES

 **DD:** yes

 **S2:** sweet, I’m coming.

 **S3:** I’ll see you guys there too

 **S4:** it’s a school night, though? And I just got home?

 **S2:** listen kid you’re in or you’re out

 **S4:** ugh. Fine. I’m in.

 **D2:** FIGS HAVE WHAT IN THEM

 

Peter grinned at his phone and tucked it happily into his pocket. He reached up and grabbed onto the hand rail at the top of the carriage and couldn’t make his cheeks stop hurting.

Finally.

Something exciting to do.

 

 

He was maybe a little later than anticipated getting to the general meeting roof. He might have gotten home to find the power had gone out. Then he might have had to call the power company and be on hold for 45 minutes and then he might have said fuck it, I’ll just eat out tonight. Only to find that the whole street’s power had gone out.

Now that was just a public health hazard.

By the time he’d gotten dinner, it was nearly 8 o’clock and at that point, he got a text from Mr. Stark saying that he’d just received word that a guy by the name of Christopher Meriwether had ordered a hit on Stark Industries in return for a recently, apparently failed assassination attempt.

Peter found it highly suspect that Meriwether had survived Cable’s wrath.

So suspect that he asked Mr. Stark to double check to see if this so-called Mr. Meriwether happened to look like a man from Chicago named Michael Ballard.

Mr. Stark informed him, after a few minutes of research that no, the man caught on security camera directing a load of henchmen in secret-service suits towards the Atrium entrance was in fact blond while Peter’s Michael Ballard dude was A) recently deceased and B) brunet.

So that was exciting.

Mr. Meriwether was either a demon spirit going around possessing people or he was a position in a larger hierarchy.

Peter made a note to look into that when his laptop was once again connected to power. He thanked Mr. Stark and said he’d handle it, then scrambled off for Midtown.

 

 

He found Wade and Little Spidey and Louis all flopped on their backs in a circle in the middle of the roof, fanning themselves and cursing the suits and the heat.

It was cooler with the lack of the sun, but the asphalt and concrete down below still sent the occasional waves of warmth floating up. Even in the summer suit, Peter’s neck was already sweating and in the back of his mind, he wondered if he was coordinated enough to take a shower in the dark when he got back home.

“Meriwether’s not dead,” he informed the three of them. Louis made a noise of confusion which was waved away by Angel.

“I thought Cable was taking care of him?” she said.

“Nah, he’s dead,” Wade said with finality.

“Michael Ballard is dead,” Peter corrected. “Meriwether, it would seem, is a shared identity. Possibly a codename.”

“From Chicago?” Wade huffed irritably.

“Possibly,” Peter said.

“UGH.”

Yeah. A few years back some enhanced folks from the windy city had blown into town and tried to pick a fight with the resident vigilantes. It hadn’t ended well.

Peter would never get over the image of the Black Widow holding a man’s helmet out over the city from the roof of the Chrysler building like Judith holding the general Holofernes’s head high.

It was the moment when he’d decided that the distance between him and the Widow was _great_ and could only be improved upon by growing _wider_.

“Meriwether; sounds like a joke,” Matt’s voice said from the south-most ledge of the roof.

Wade cheered listlessly like a soccer fan at his arrival and then flopped back flat on his back. Matt in his summer-suit, the usual black pajamas and wrapped fists with the single exception of an underarmor shirt in place of the usual sweatshirt, sniffed in his direction and then made a face in Peter’s. It wasn’t a nice one. It definitely had to do with figs.

Matt crowded up in his space and Peter sunk his head into his shoulder to protect his neck.

“You are a bad listener, Peter Parker,” Matt said.

“But an amazing instigator,” Sam’s bright voice popped up from behind Matt.

Peter blinked in surprise. Matt scowled harder and warded his mostly-matching apprentice away so that his threatening reputation might be maintained. Sam danced out of his reach and then wriggled right back into it. He squirmed himself right between Peter and Matt, in fact, and, like a man truly unafraid of God, wrapped his arms fondly around Matt’s ribs. He laid the side of his face, against Matt’s collarbone and cuddled in.

Matt did not acknowledge him.

“Friends?” Sam asked with his white, skull-like mask gazing up at the side of Matt’s jaw.

Matt finally shoved him off.

“No friends,” he said, “You have plenty of friends.”

“I have five friends,” Sam said, bouncing along right on Matt’s heels kind of like Hazel as he shook his head and went to go survey the city to the east.

“You have more than five friends,” Matt sighed.

“You, Kirsten, Foggy, Tuesday, my sister—”

“Samuel.”

Woho! The mom voice made a dramatic reappearance. Angel and Louis were interested now.

“—Fine, okay. We can count Hazel, but that’s only six friends—”

“We’re not friends,” Matt said pressing fingers into his temples through his mask. Sam was undaunted.

“Sure, we are, you let me live downstairs. Why would you let your enemy live downstairs?”

“You’re not my enemy,” Matt said, now at the sky.

“Not enemy, therefore friend,” Sam did the math with his hands in case Matt had missed that. Matt turned long-sufferingly towards Wade.

“You can have him any second now,” he said. “He’s yours.”

 Wade had sat up and appeared taken with this exuberant ball of energy; he stood up and went to inspect him at Matt’s side. Sam flinched away from him when he got close, though. He retreated to Matt’s other side and hunkered in, as though trying to decide whether or not to hiss. Peter heard Dave’s boots hit the roof and looked over his shoulder to see the guy stand up and to see Miles alight next to him shortly thereafter.

“The gang’s all here then?” Dave asked.

Wade’s attention snapped to him and he snatched Sam right up off the ground. Sam did a fucking great impression of a three-year-old with separation anxiety and tried to punch Wade in the shoulder so as to return to Matt, but Wade took no notice. He took him three paces forward and placed him down right in front of Dave.

“David,” he said with both hands on Sam’s suddenly very-thin looking shoulders, “This is your replacement.”

Sam’s white mask stared soulfully up into Dave’s red horned one.

Dave cocked his head slowly to the side.

He opened his mouth to say something, probably ‘hi,’ but Sam vanished. They all blinked in surprise and turned to Matt to see that Sam’s white mask was once again all up in his business, this time whispering furiously into his ear. Matt’s face remained flat.

“Does he _look_ like Daredevil?” he finally asked his protégé.

Silence. Sam’s mask gave nothing away.

“Does he _move_ like Daredevil?” Matt asked.

Still nothing.

“Then what do you think, kiddo? What’s the hypothesis here?” Matt pressed.

Sam tucked himself into his side and stared at Dave. The only thing that gave away how he really felt was the sudden strength of his jaw.

Oh.

Baby don’t like.

Wade barked a laugh and slapped Dave on the shoulder.

“You been weighed, measured, and found wanting, big guy,” he said.

“I didn’t even do anything,” Dave breathed.

 

 

They decided that they’d do a sweep of the city. There was enough of them and no real direction they needed to take at the moment. Matt was, of course, interested in checking in on his old haunts to scare the living shit out of a few old enemies. Dave offered to go with him but found himself held off by the mugging white mask which, now that Peter was looking for it, was absolutely attempting to protect its mentor from this imposter.

It was adorable, actually.

Wade produced a coin for dividing up the work.

The first team to get heads would get north. The second team, south. And the last group would pick either east or west.

“Wait, who’s team three?” Miles asked.

Peter surveyed the group.

Louis popped up a hand.

“I’ll go with Dave, if you want,” he said.

“I’ll go with Louis then,” Miles volunteered. He’d definitely had enough of Peter for the day. That was fine, he’d earned a break.

“Nah,” Wade said. “Bitsy, you’re going with Baby Red. Y’all are the next generation of this shit, go bond. Red, come with me boo-bear, I’ve got so much to tell you. The rest of y’all figure it out.”

Matt made a face that Peter couldn’t decipher.

“Blindspot will go with Peter,” he said.

Oh. Okay.

Wade made quizzical noise, then shrugged. Sam waved at Peter.

“Alright,” Peter said, turning to his team. “Angel, Bitsy—go paint the town. Louis, you’ll go with Dave. That okay?”

It was okay.

Perfect. Now toss that coin, Wade.

 

 

 


	7. ghost brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Get on your knees, Spiderman,” the guy said. 
> 
> “Oh, wow. Come on, my man, at least buy me dinner first,” Peter said. He tucked his phone back into his pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: 
> 
> There's eye-stuff in this one. If descriptions of eyes squick you out, just be aware that there's stuff coming up. It's not like, major descriptors or anything, but I just wanted to be upfront with y'all!

Sam was fast and Sam was just as bendy and twisty in the air as Peter. He moved with almost theatrical grace and Peter could totally see why he’d caught Matt’s interest. He swept through the sky almost like a ghost. Peter lost track of him more than once and he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that’s what Matt had meant when he said that the guy had an invisibility suit.  

But sure enough, after a moment or two of surprised searching, Sam’s white skull would flash up at him as the guy swung around a pole or popped up to track the next jump.

Peter liked him.

He had a dry sense of humor and a relaxed way of telling people off without being too mean about it. If he hadn’t gone chasing after Daredevil, Peter thought that he’d probably have made a great Spiderman.

He held a guy down while Sam liberated the bottle and knife from his hands and, once he was taken care of and the gals he’d been threatening were safely tucked into an uber, he decided to just ask the question.

“Dude, why leave New York?” he asked. “You’re from around these parts, right? Why chase Matt across the country? I mean, if you were around, I would have taken you on, we could have had a five-man Spidey team. Coulda called you Arachno-Sam or something.”

Sam laughed behind his mask and left their zip-tied perp to droop against a fence. Sirens were closing in.

“I looked for you,” Sam said.

“No shit?” Peter asked.

“Yeah,” Sam shrugged, “About a year and a half back. Couldn’t find you, though, so I kind of didn’t have much choice.”

Aw, bummer.

“I was doing my Master’s at Cornell, man, sorry about that,” Peter said. Sam perked up and seemed to want to say something but blue lights hit their toes and so they had to jam.

 

 

On the way up high for a minute to talk, they ran into a lady screaming and sobbing in Chinese out in the street. Sam broke the rhythm of his leap to catch ahold of a fire-escape pole. He listened for a beat and then leapt down to the lady’s feet.

Peter watched him drop and then followed after.

Sam spoke the same Chinese the woman did, it seemed, and she wrapped her arms around his neck abruptly at something that he said. He gently patted at her and dipped his head quickly in a promise.

“Her daughter is missing,” he told Peter. “She’s eight years old and her mom is scared that her dad kidnapped her.”

Ah, well. They couldn’t very well leave that for a chat, could they?

 

 

Peter went high and Sam went low. Peter checked over alleys, looking for frenetic movement. He stared into streets lined with empty gutters and over the heads of streetlights. He had to remind himself that he was looking for a small body. From as high up as he was, the movement would look like the shuffle of a mouse into the dried weeds of a field.

He saw nothing.

He hit the asphalt and sought out Sam, but Sam’s black suit had made him, once again, invisible.

Until, that is, Peter caught that white skull face talking to a group of old men having a drink outside. They seemed very comfortable speaking with him, again in Chinese.

Besides English, Peter had learned some sign language, but when it came to spoken language, he knew only broken Spanish and even that poorly. He felt a little awkward letting Sam do this work on his own.

Peter had taken Spanish classes in highschool and practiced a little with Matt as a youth, but it had never progressed beyond that. Matt had taken years upon years of Spanish. He was more or less fluent and his job required him to be for his clients, so in a way, he was always learning and practicing. Miles sometimes chatted with his classmates in Spanish and he spoke to his mom almost entirely in Spanish. Peter had been taken aback to hear him the first time he’d, out of nowhere, started chiding Angel who gave back twice as much as she got, as always. Then he’d felt silly because Miles’s last name was Morales.

Come on, Parker. Context clues.

Angel, whose mom and dad had come to the city from Puerto Rico as kids in the 70s, was proud of her heritage, she’d asked Peter if he wanted one when she’d caught him eyeing up the flag she’d made in sequins on the back of one of her jean jackets. Spanish was her first language, she told him, she’d learned English in kindergarten, but her family spoke a mix of both languages at home. Miles stumbled a little around her, but when they started arguing, boy, did he get with the program.

“Can’t go around giving in when shit gets hard,” Peter had heard Angel tell Miles once when they hadn’t realized that Peter had arrived. “If not for ourselves, then for our people. They need heroes, too, you know.”

Watching Sam talk to the old guys outside made Peter feel like maybe he should make more of an effort in that particular area again.

Spiderman was everybody’s hero. Or at least, he was supposed to be. And that meant that he should probably be able to talk to as many everybodies as possible.

Okay, done. He’d break out the books when he got back home.

Sam pointed off down the street and one of the old guys made a corner with his hands. Sam thanked him and noticed Peter. He hopped over to join him.

“They saw a guy with a kid go this way,” he said, pointing south.

 

 

They found the daughter. Daddy wasn’t happy, but they didn’t really care if Daddy was happy or not. Baby wanted her damn mama and so to her mama she would go.

They called the police while waiting inside with mama, who clutched her daughter and smoothed back her hair. The lady called Sam something that didn’t sound like Blindspot. He told Peter that it was more or less the same, conceptually.

Ghost Brother, he explained. And yeah, no. Peter thought it suited him better than Blindspot.

 

 

The police came and Peter and Sam didn’t stick around after that.

 

 

High, high up on crane with red lights on its corners, Sam kicked his feet and cocked his mask up halfway for a breath of fresh air. Peter followed suit and yanked at his collar to catch a breeze on his sweaty neck.

“You looked like you wanted to say something earlier,” he said at Sam’s quiet.

“Hmm? Oh. I guess I just wished that I could do a Master’s,” Sam said.

“Dude, you can totally do a Master’s,” Peter said, “You know everything there is to know about figs. You’re ready to go.”

Sam laughed.

Until he didn’t.

Peter didn’t like that silence.

“Maybe you could get a scholarship or something,” he said. “It’s not as expensive as people think if you’re broke, turns out universities are desperate for “non-traditional” students. Makes them look like they care more than they do.”

“It’s not that,” Sam said. He pulled his mask back on. “It’s just not an option for me right now.”

Hm.

That was too bad.

“Where’d you do your undergrad, then?” Peter asked.

“Columbia,” Sam said.

“No, shit? Hey, that’s why you and Matt get along, huh?”

“Something like that. I didn’t get a degree, though.”

“Ehn. Degree doesn’t matter, you got the skills, didn’t you?”

Sam said nothing for a long time.

Fuck.

“No, sorry. That wasn’t cool of me to assume,” Peter said.

“It’s alright. I’m trying to help my sis get hers—her degree, that is,” Sam said.

“Oh, so she’s younger than you?” Peter said.

“Yeah, she’s—she’s a good kid.” Sam took a breath that Peter felt like was forced.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, no. Fine. Sorry, it’s just been a minute since I’ve been in the city. I should go visit her, we’re not far.”

“Oh, sure. You wanna go now?” Peter asked. “I’ll let the others know we’ll be a minute late back, I’m sure they’ll be fine with it.”

Sam considered it and then nodded.

“Alright cool, you need a hand down?” Peter offered.

Sam turned to him with a bit more of the earlier chaotic energy.

“Can I try a webslinger?” he asked.

 

 

This guy.

This fucking guy.

Was horrendous at webswinging.

“That was amazing!”

He’d nearly died and this was how he acted?

“I didn’t expect the lag! How do you plan for the lag?”

Definitely Daredevil. He was definitely the next Daredevil.

 

 

Sam said that he wouldn’t be more than a minute and bopped off a few blocks over. Peter decided that if he wouldn’t be long, then he’d just wait for the guy on a roof. Chinatown had a distinctive smell. Peter didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the area. MJ spent more; she had a couple of favorite restaurants in this area, but Peter was closer to Flushing, so if he found himself craving a particular type of Asian food, he was pretty happy to head there.

There were loads of red and yellow and green signs around Chinatown. Some of them were neon. They gave the place a certain kind of warm glow; it held even over the heat. Peter pulled out his phone and attempted to frame some of them in a more or less interesting composition.

He took a couple of shots, then started fucking around with them in his editing app until he heard footsteps returning.

“She alright?” he asked without looking up.

A click answered him and he looked up into the mouth of a barrel.

“You’re not Blindspot,” he told the man in his suit with a knowledgeable finger.

“Get on your knees, Spiderman,” the guy said.

“Oh, wow. Come on, my man, at least buy me dinner first,” Peter said. He tucked his phone back into his pocket.

The gun didn’t move. The guy behind it had no sense of humor.

“I’m gonna give you to the count of ten,” the man said.

“Ten? Are you sure? Why not three?” Peter goaded. Tracking, tracking, tracking.

Where the fuck was Sam? Any civilians around? Who was going to hear this bullet?

How fast could he kick a gun?

Fast enough.

The shot went off and the gun went flying. The guy went down on his side. Peter heard a second shot but didn’t feel anything and so busied himself with getting on top of this fucker. Guy put up a fight, but Peter twisted his arm.

Literally twisted his arm.

“You one of Meriwether’s?” he asked the man over his shouting.

Yeah. Yeah, he was.

“Yeah, I ain’t love your boss, man,” Peter said, putting an extra grind into the twisting, “Thought that him and me had reached an understanding.”

The man gasped.

“I’ll let go if you give me his real name,” Peter said.

The man shouted and jerked his body away.

“Or we could do this the hard way,” Peter sighed.

“GET HIM, ALREADY, ” the man shouted and Peter looked up to see a whole line of new friends, all in black suits.

Problematic.

He started counting points of contact he needed to hit. He’d gotten to four when the two guys on the right launched themselves into the two guys on the left and the whole wall of them came a-tumbling down.

Well, hi Sam. Welcome back.

Sam’s body language changed in the face of multiple threats. He moved like a snake.

Also like a target.

Two of the suits recovered from the ground and went charging after Sam. Peter dropped his first gun-toting pal to web their feet to the pavement before they got much further. They fell on their fellows when they lost their balance. Peter’s guy tried to come up behind him, but Sam caught him first. He swept one foot forward, ducking his head low to throw himself into a somersault in the air and, on the way to right-side-up, he brought a leg out and slammed it hard into the top of the man’s head right when it came over Peter’s shoulder to grab him.

All three of them went down. The man with the impact, Peter with the weight of the guy crashing down onto him, and Sam because he didn’t have a limb to break his fall.

Was it messy?

Yes.

Was it effective?

Totally.

Peter scrabbled up first and grabbed Sam, shoving him forward into a run.

 

 

Those guys were certainly not the only folks on their tail. The others started to come out of the wood work as soon Peter and Sam went tearing down the street.

“Should we go up?” Sam called over the pop and crash of bullets.

“No, we’ll be targets, we need to go down,” Peter called.

“Down?”

Yeah, boo.

Down. South. Towards the police department.

 

 

They went screeching past the line of supermarkets standing watch over St. James’s street with more and more black suits and bullets on their tail and—oh look, an SUV now, that was cool. They snapped a sharp right onto Madison and the sound of bullets was overtaken by the sound of windows being shattered and car alarms going off.

“What the fuck now?” Sam shouted over the din.

“Don’t die,” Peter shouted back just as the right bullet hit the right window at the right time.

The police station lit the fuck up out front. The front of the station flooded with officers and investigators and pencil pushers working the night shift. The commotion startled Peter and Sam’s pursuers, which was, in Peter’s humble opinion, further proof that all these assholes were out of towners.

What exactly did they expect to find at a place literally called Police Plaza???

The police were none too pleased have their main hub under fire and people were very soon screaming into the night, telling the guys in suits to put their hands on their heads and get on the ground.

That was validating.

The guy suddenly screaming, “Hey, there’s Spiderman!”

Him?

He was not so helpful.

“Alright, Ghostie, now’s our time to shine,” Peter said. He kicked some power into his knees and snagged an arm around Sam’s waist.

And Houston, they had lift off.

 

 

Sam clung to his neck in the typical fashion. Freaked right the fuck out and not down to fall.

“You’re alright,” Peter assured him after the second drop at the top of his arc.

“I am _not_ ,” Sam whimpered after the third.

“No, you’re fine,” Peter said.  “We’re good. That was a—”

“PUT ME DOWN.”

Well, alright, no need to yell.

“Hold on, pal, gimme just a—”

“PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN.”

Dude. Seriously? Priorities here. They had a load of cops and robbers to escape from.

“Peter,” Sam whimpered, “I’m gonna be sick.”

Oh.

 

 

Peter felt really bad about this. Moreover, Matt was going to kill him for turning his apprentice into, first a moving target, and then sick puppy.

Poor Sam wretched against one of the walls of the safe-ish ledge Peter landed them on. In hindsight, Peter was glad he’d picked the ledge because Sam probably wouldn’t have done so hot with one of the perches. Angel hated the perches; claimed they gave her vertigo.

Peter could only imagine what it would do to a guy with motion sickness.

Peter sighed and turned to see that Sam had gone quiet.

“Hey, buddy, you want me to get you a water or something?” he asked. Sam had his hands pressed against the wall in front of him and they seemed to be curling a little.

Sam said nothing.

Peter’s Spidey Sense flickered.

“Sam?” he asked.

“I don’t feel so good,” Sam said quietly.

Yeesh. Okay. Maybe Peter was just gonna have to eat this one and call Matt to come get—nope. Hold everything. That was wetness shining on the side of Sam’s shirt.

It wasn’t puke.

“Sam,” Peter said as carefully as possible, “I think we oughta lay you down, buddy.”

Sam took one hand off the wall and Peter scrambled over to grab it before he brought it down to the wound.

The sight of blood would probably just make him panic.

“You’re okay,” he said, carefully directing the hand to the opposite side of Sam’s body. “You’re okay, here, let me see. You’re okay.”

Sam let Peter ruck up the side of his shirt and Peter hissed at the damage.

A through and through shot from the looks of it. Fuck, that had to hurt. Sam must not have noticed it in the chase. Adrenaline did that to you.

“Alright, pal. Don’t panic, okay? But you’ve been shot,” Peter said. “So listen, are you enhanced or—”

“I’m gonna be sick,” Sam said.

“No, no, no, no, no. You’re gonna be fine,” Peter said. “Here, let’s sit down. There you go, here, hold onto me, I gotchu.”

He managed to get Sam down onto his knees and moved Sam’s hands to that he was holding onto himself rather than the wall.

“Listen to me, Sam. Are you enhanced?” Peter asked again. Sam’s hands dug into the suit’s fabric.

“N—I—hng.”

“That’s a no? Okay, I’m gonna call an ambulance, okay?” Peter pulled out his phone and found the screen cracked, but whatever. He’d just swiped on the screen when Sam barked,

“NO.”

Peter fumbled the phone.

“Dude,” he said. “You need a hospital. I don’t fuck with wounds like—”

“MATT,” Sam shouted at the sky, voice cracking, “DOUBLE D! DAREDEVIL!”

Woah, woah, woah. That was unnecessary. Matt would hear of this soon enough. The main priority at the minute was—

“BOSS!! HELP!!”

“Sam, I need you to calm down,” Peter said, “I know it’s scary, but you’ve gotta c—”

Boots hit the ledge almost immediately and in seconds, Matt was pulling Sam out of Peter’s arms demanding, “What happened? Sam? Sammy? What’s the matter? Are you bleeding? Where are you bleeding?”

“He’s been shot,” Peter said, “Be careful, I’m trying to call an ambulance.”

Matt used his teeth to pick the ropes off his knuckles and then unwound the tape over them.

“No ambulances,” he said when the tape was free. Sam made a horrible whine when Matt hauled him closer to feel the wound.

No ambulance? Was he crazy?

“Red,” Wade’s voice said lowly from behind Peter’s shoulder. “Kid’s gonna bleed out. He needs a—”

“ _No_ hospitals,” Matt snapped. Then to Sam he said softly, “You’re okay, Sammy. I got you, come on. Arms around my neck. Up, up. Call Claire Temple,” Matt ordered Peter.

“Red,” Wade said firmly.

“Temple,” Matt said back. “We don’t have time.”

Peter deferred to Wade who’s mask twisted with his frown. He looked between Sam’s softening cries and Peter’s now shaking fingers on this phone, and after a second he looked a second, he gave Peter a curt nod.

 

 

Claire cleared the floorspace in front of the windows in her living room and told Matt to set Sam down there. She was lifting up the guy’s soaked shirt before he was even all the way down. She peeled back the bandages Wade had wound around the wound before they’d moved him, then swore and sent Matt to get the _other_ first aid kit.

“What’s your name, honey?” she asked while he was gone.

Sam was in too much pain to say.

“His name is Sam,” Peter said. Claire met his eyes and nodded. She pulled Sam’s mask all the way off his face and set it aside. His whole face was crushed in, trying to contain himself.

“Sam, then. Well, nice to meet you, Sam,” she said. Matt reappeared to hand off the kit. She snapped it open and pulled on a set of gloves. “Sam, honey, you want someone to hold your hand? This is gonna hurt like hell, boy-o.”

“I got him,” Matt said. He hopped over Sam’s body to his other side and dropped down onto an elbow to pull Sam’s face into his shoulder.

It was familiar.

Stupidly familiar. Uncomfortably familiar.

He’d down the same thing for Peter, time after time. Bullet after bullet. From age seventeen to twenty-one.

“You’re okay, Sammy,” Matt murmured into Sam’s hair.

The guy screamed and dug fingers into the underarmor on Matt’s back as Claire felt for shrapnel in the wound.

“You’re okay,” Matt promised. “I got you.”

Fuck. Peter couldn’t watch this.

 

 

The others got the text message and met Peter and Wade on top of Claire’s building’s roof.

“Is he okay?” Angel asked.

The cries downstairs were muffled by walls and by the flesh of Matt’s shoulder. It was hard to know.

“He will be,” Wade said for Peter. He sighed. “Well, that’s one way to end a night.”

Peter felt like shit.

“I should have noticed earlier,” he said, pushing hands against his forehead. “How did I not notice earlier?”

“Kid’s wearing black on black, Pete, not to mention that that cute little fire fight ya’ll started over there down south. That probably didn’t help,” Wade said.

“It’s better that you got him away from the situation as quickly as you did,” Dave said. He dropped to a knee beside Peter and squeezed his shoulder. “You did what you could, man. Don’t blame yourself.”

“But Sam’s not enhanced,” Peter burst out. “I should have paid closer attention—should have just taken him to a hospital—”

“No, you did right,” Dave interrupted. “It’s his choice whether or not to go to a hospital. And he obviously said no for a reason.”

UGH. Someone get this dad out of here, Peter didn’t have time for him right now. He had a guilt complex to feed.

“DD’s got him, Spidey, he’ll be okay,” Miles said quietly from next to Louis. “We’ve all been shot by now, he’ll be okay.”

God, what a fucking world they lived in.

 

 

Twenty minutes and Claire texted them with Matt’s phone to say that they could come back in. She sent a ‘okay’ emoji hand which was a huge relief.

Sam seemed to be sleeping, still pressed up against Matt’s shoulder. He looked so pale, he was almost grey. Matt rocked lightly but didn’t seem angry or upset when Peter and the others slunk into the living room to gather around him.

“You could have fathered that boy, Matt,” Claire sniffed derisively as she dumped all her supplies and tools into the sink with a clatter. “You got something you need to share with the class?”

Matt huffed a laugh.

“Yes, I’ve been hiding a secret love child from you for the last eleven years, Claire,” he said.

“I knew it, you bastard,” Claire said.

“He’s okay?” Miles asked, giving Matt wide eyes he couldn’t see.

“He’ll be fine,” Matt said. “Not the first time, just the first through-and-through.”

Aigh.

Ouch.

Was it bad that that was still a little comforting to know?

“Is there anything we can do?” Dave asked. Matt hummed.

“No, I think we’re gonna call it a night, though. Fogs is…not surprised. But as you might imagine, he is less than pleased.”

“Take him to a clinic tomorrow,” Claire said in the kitchen.

“I will take him to a clinic,” Matt promised.

“You need help getting him home?” Peter asked. His heart yearned to do something. Anything.

“Ah, no. Thanks, though. Although I do want to get him into a different shirt, so if you could just hold him for a minute, that would be great.”

Hold things, Peter could do. Any time of the day, any day of the week.

Claire left with Matt saying something about a blanket and a clean t-shirt she had that might fit Sam. Peter got busy on the holding task.

Sam’s fingers were freezing, still wrapped in tape and rope.  

He must have started going into shock. His heart didn’t feel too fast to Peter now, though, so he seemed more or less out of the deep end, so to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Peter told him.

“Pete, it’s fine,” Wade sighed. “Shit was bound to happen, we could pool all our luck and still someone would get impaled on a pike or something.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Peter snapped.

Sam’s eyes fluttered a bit at the tone and he blinked blearily at his fingers. Then up at Wade over Peter’s shoulder. Peter watched him and then glanced back to see that both Wade and Dave had gone from tired-dad-mode to horrified-papa-mode in the space of a heartbeat.

 “Uh- _huh_ ,” Wade creaked. “That’s normal.”

Sam blinked again and shook his head.

“Where am I?” he asked, turning to Peter.

Peter didn’t mean to go stiff. But he sure as fuck did.

Sam seemed to catch on instantaneously. He shoved Peter away from him and snagged the mask up  from next to him. Slapped it on his face and held it there like a plate.

There was a moment of silence.

“It’s nothing,” Sam said.

Uh.

Huh.

“It’s nothing,” Peter said hoarsely. “Totally fine. Nothing to see.”

Angel, Louis, and Miles, who were in front of Peter, referred to Dave and Wade for more information, but find it, they did not. What they found was Wade making up an excuse to go talk to Matt _immediately_.

Peter didn’t really know what to do now, so he did what he was best at.

“S-sorry for uh, getting you blown to bits,” he said.

“It’s fine,” Sam squeaked from behind the mask. He hadn’t let go of it. Probably wouldn’t any time soon.

Another awkward silence.

“Is it though?” Dave said.

Peter could have stabbed a knife through his toes. But he didn’t have a knife and Dave’s toes were too far away, so he locked his jaw and settled for a mean fucking look. Miles looked at Angel and she shrugged back with her hands.

“Hey, what’s wrong with your face?” she asked point blank.

“Nothing,” Peter snapped just as Sam said, “That’s just how it is.”

Was it, though?

Peter was pretty damn sure that he had seen Sam’s face the night that he and Matt and the others had flown in from San Francisco and he was pretty damn sure that he hadn’t had.

Well.

“Dude, I can’t,” Peter said, “Your eyes fucking _glow_.”

“THAT’S NORMAL,” Sam said desperately while the others in the room winced.

“That’s normal,” Matt’s voice agreed with the sound of his boots behind Peter.

“Define normal, please,” Louis pleaded for them all.

Peter didn’t have time for that.

“I asked you if you were enhanced, man, you should have just said so,” he sighed.

Enhanced folks, he understood. None of them ever wanted to go to a hospital. Too much risk involved. Too likely for SHIELD to catch wind of your so-called confidential information.

“I’m not enhanced,” Sam whimpered.

“Sam,” Matt said gently.

“I’m not.”

“They’ll understand.”

All eyes went to Matt now. Sam waited a beat, chewing on the thought, then slowly lowered the mask.

His eyes were like inverse eyes. The sclera was black, almost hollow upon first glance. The irises were an unearthly blue. They moved around like normal eyes, though. And they dropped when Sam dropped his face. Wade whistled.

“That’s a look,” he said.

“You’re a look,” Matt said simply.

Wade sniffed.

“Well, ain’t that the truth. Come on, kiddo. Buck up, you already seen my mug, you’re doing just—”

“He hasn’t,” Matt said simply.

Wade paused.

“No, we went to dinner the other night,” he said. “I went full commando, just for y’all.”

“Yes,” Matt said while Sam refused to look up and fidgeted with his mask. “But my understanding is that it was dark at that time. Sam can’t see very well in the dark.”

What.

“They’re not real eyes,” Sam mumbled.

Not? Real eyes? Some kind of prosthetic, then?

Sam nodded a little.

“They were a gift,” Matt said. “And so we shall treasure them. Gotta change your shirt, brat. It’s gonna hurt.”

A? gift?

“I think that’s plenty of excitement for the night,” Dave decided. “Why don’t we give these folks some privacy?”

Yeah.

No.

Of course.

 

 

Friday morning. Fuck work. Fuck auditors. A man had nearly died in Peter’s arms last night. He had at least a couple of his priorities straight. And given the constant buzzing in his pocket at the moment, his team did, too.

He promised he’d report back. Then headed down to Hell’s Kitchen.

 

 

Karen let him in on her way out of the door and told him, quietly, that Sam was just fine, he was embarrassed more than anything, before hurrying off to harass someone about shit they did not want to be harassed about.

Peter stepped into the living room to see Foggy sitting very patiently with the dogs, telling them about how naughty it was to step on their house-brother when he was already down and how there would be no nonconsensual kissing, dancing, or standing over anybody for the time being.

Peter, for some reason, felt included in this telling-off.

“Uh?” he said.

“Bedroom,” Foggy said.

Okay.

 

 

Peter nudged the bedroom door open to see Matt laying on his side on the ground on the far side of the bed in the room, next to Sam who had laid himself out on his back and buried himself into the pillow in his arms.

“Peter,” Matt greeted.

“Double D,” Peter greeted back. “I am here to self-flagellate.”

“Oh, excellent,” Matt said, “Come join the party.”

And what a party it was.

Peter took off his shoes and picked his way over to adopt a reflection of Matt’s pose on Sam’s other side.

“This is unnecessary,” Sam said, muffled by the pillow.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the story of my life,” Peter said. He took a breath. “Are you for real okay, Sam? We didn’t mean to be rude last night. I think we were just surprised, is all.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Sam said to the pillow. “I wore prosthetic contacts when I met you and Deadpool. That’s what I chose to do.”

Prosthetic contacts?

“They cover my—I dunno. They cover everything but the middle bit.”

Oh. Sounded kind of painful.

“Do they hurt?” Peter asked.

“Only when they’re not clean,” Sam said.

Huh. The more you know.

“Sam’s visually impaired,” Matt said for both of them since they were doing a great job dancing around the subject. Sam made an unhappy sound into the pillow. Peter swallowed.

“I, uh, wouldn’t have guessed,” he said.

Sam made a louder unhappy sound into the pillow. Matt huffed.

“You can’t have it both ways, Sammy,” he said. “You either look like everyone else or you don’t.”

“I wanna be in-between,” Sam grumbled.

Matt chuckled.

“We are having a hard time accepting the purpose of the prosthetics,” he told Peter. “And we are also having a hard time not thinking that this is the end of the world.”

“It is,” Sam said resolutely.

Matt smiled.

Right. So this complicated things.

“Are you like Matt then?” Peter asked. “Do you also suffer from dolphin brain?”

Matt’s smile abandoned him for irritation. Sam laughed, though. Mission accomplished.

“No,” Sam said, “I just got shitty eyes.”

“Functional eyes,” Matt corrected. “And infinite resources. Not to mention a very attractive and charming mentor.”

“You’re right, Foggy’s great,” Sam said.

Matt shoved himself up.

“I’m done with you two,” he decided, standing and dusting himself off. “I have a wedding to arrange and dogs to walk. Call me when the pity party is over.”

Sam let go of the pillow with one hand to wave after Matt’s back. Matt closed the door.

 

 

“So, uh,” Peter said. “Do you need to process, or?”

“My mom died three months ago,” Sam said.

GREAT START.

“I’m so sorry,” Peter said.

“It’s fine. She joined the Hand and they wanted me to kill DD. It was a whole thing.”

W-was it? Was that what they were calling it, then??

“So uh, eyes? Came from that?” Peter tried a little desperately.

“No. Eyes came after some lunatic artist stabbed mine out.”

WHAT WHAT WHAT

“Then eyes,” Peter clarified.

“Mom traded her soul for the eyes,” Sam said.

This.

This was a little much. Even for Peter.

“See, you know how I said I could have made you Arachno-Sam, last night?” he said. “I lied. You’re too edgy to be Spiderman.”

Sam laughed, then groaned.

“I know,” he said. “I _know_. I didn’t ask for it, it just came to me.”

Yeah, that was kind of the way things happened with people like them.

“Double D is one of the best people I know,” Peter said. “And you guys are already so close, I’m sure you will be invincible in a few years here.”

Sam sighed.

“I don’t have much choice, I don’t think,” he said. “Who else is gonna understand after all this shit?”

Yeah.

Yeah.

“I can try?” Peter said. “I mean. I’m far-sighted, I dunno if that helps at all. My mutation fixed everything else but said ‘fuck you’ to all text. Like, I’m pretty sure it’s just an indication that I might grow more eyes in the future? You can have some of my eyes if you can wait a few years here.”

Now _that_ was a real laugh. Progress. Excellent. Let’s keep in that direction, shall we?

“I wish I’d met you first, Spidey,” Sam said.

Aw.

“Hey now, it’s lucky you didn’t,” Peter said, skooching a little closer. “Me eighteen months ago was a far less healthy person than me now. Me in grad school? God. Like, peak psychological disaster. The copy cats have really helped with that. But anyways, I guess what I’m trying to say is that your inverse-eyes don’t scare me, and I’m sorry that you felt like you needed to hide them from us, and it’s pretty amazing that you’re keeping on doing this crazy thing even after it’s literally disabled you. And, well, I dunno if it makes you feel better at all, but there are actually loads of disabled vigilantes, so you’re definitely not alone in this, even if it might feel that way sometimes.”

The pillow crept down a couple inches so that Peter could see the unearthly blue of one of Sam’s irises.

“I thought it was just the boss man,” he said.

Peter laughed.

“Nah, man,” he said, “You heard of Hawkeye, or rather Hawkguy, specifically?”

A nod.

“Deaf,” Peter said.

“What.”

“He’s deaf.”

“No way.”

“You should have seen him and Matt when they met. Clint—Hawkeye’s name is Clint—signs when he doesn’t got his hearing aids in and Matt thought he was trying to pick a fight, but he was actually trying to flirt. It was a mess.”

The pillow came down a little more.

“That’s kind of amazing,” Sam said.

“Yeah, and like, Sergeant Barnes only has one arm,” Peter continued, flopping over onto his stomach and dropping his chin into his palms. “My friend Shuri made it for him and she shakes it at him like Buzz Lightyear when he does shit she doesn’t approve of. Cable only has one arm, too. Wade unscrewed his metal one while he was asleep once and I swear to god, for a second we all thought we’d dropped straight into Hell.”

Sam hugged the pillow to his chest instead of his face and blinked inverse eyes at Peter.

“Are there more than that?” he asked.

“Oh, for sure,” Peter said. “Wade’s chronically ill—he’s got stage four cancer which is basically in stasis—and Misty Knight, you might not have heard of her—she uses a prosthetic, too. SHIELD Director Fury is blind in one eye. Mr. Stark—my boss. Like my real boss, not my super-people boss—has a pacemaker. Like, 98% of all of us night crawlers have got some kind of PTSD. Depression, anxiety. Me? I’ve got the anxiety. Ooooh, itches. It’s all over me, I gotta take like, horse tranqs sometimes. They’re three times the normal dose—my therapist loves me. Hates me. Loves me. I honestly don’t know and I don’t think she does either. She mostly just wants my body for science.”

Sam turned onto his good side so he was facing Peter. His lips flickered a bit into a smile.

“Spidey,” he said.

“Yes, non-mutant?” Peter said back sweetly.

“People talk about you a lot online, did you know that?”

More than was physically comfortable, my friend.

“People have all kinds of crazy ideas about you, but they all kind of agree that you’re the guy they’d want to save them if they really needed it,” Sam said. “I just thought you should know. And I guess I can kinda see why they think like that now.”

Aw.

Awwwwww. Peter had to ruin this, he was sorry, the opportunity was right _there_.

“Only kinda see, though, amiright?” he said with bouncing eyebrows.

It took Sam a second.

Then Matt had to come in to break them up.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really really wish we got more information about Sam's eyes and eyesight post-Muse. He can't see as well as he could before, I got that much, but there seems to be no real discussion of what exactly that means and how that has affected his relationship with Matt.
> 
> to this end I have decided to headcanon, based on his description of shit just being dark all the time, that his new eyes take in and process maybe half of the light that they used to. So this means that when things are bright and high-contrast (like, during sunny day times or with florescent/floodlights/streetlight beams and with black on white text or white on black text), he actually does pretty okay with seeing things. But when things are dark/dim (think, rural night time, or rooms lit only by candles or old lamps, whole rooms made out of the same color or text and backgrounds of similar colors) he has a much, much harder time. He can still see the high-contrast stuff at night, but lower-contrast things in poor light is very bad for Sams. 
> 
> And so it's kind of important to his and Matt's relationship that he's become visually impaired, because Matt's not just his teacher for martial arts now. He's his teacher for how to be a visually impaired person in a highly visual world, too. He's teaching him how to work with his disability. So because they have both of those things in common, Matt and Sam are closer with each other in some ways than Matt and Peter are. That's why Matt allows more touch with Sam and kind of demands that Sam guides him (he's actually guiding sam at night!), he's trying help him get used to his new way of moving through the world.
> 
> Anyways. that is where this chapter comes from. Hope that helps some of the wonder-ers out there!


	8. wedding favors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe the guy behind it is some kind of vigilante collector,” he hypothesized. “Maybe he’s like the old man from Up who lives in a blimp and collects weird birds, except instead of birds, they’re vigilantes.” 
> 
> Peter needed a second to work through the many levels of that.

There were rules now, which Peter didn’t like.

Rule One was that him and Sam were not allowed to commit any ‘shenanigans’ until Sam was no longer horizontal.

Rule Two was that Sam was not allowed to not be horizontal until Matt said so.

Rule Three was that Peter and Sam were not allowed to collaborate to scheme against the enforcer of said rules and, if caught, were to be separated.

Peter hated rules.

There was a beautiful friendship right on the horizon here and all these squares were really fucking it up for him.

 

 

 **SM:** hi friends. Just an fyi our beloved mini DD is fine.

 **BT:** I am fine

 **DD:** I swear I took your phone. Go to sleep

 **S3:** glad to hear that!!

 **S2:** yeah man that was scary!! Glad you’re okay give us a shout if you need anything

 **D2:** yes please do, I’m right around the block from you guys

 **BT:** everyone is so nice! oh my god boss you’ve been hiding a support network from me

 **DD:** how the fuck are you texting? I am holding your phone.

 **S2:** DD there’s a web app

 **DD:** for fuck’s sake

 **S4:** yo there’s another crazy guy standing outside my school claiming to be Spiderman. He’s wearing a really bad version of Louis’s suit.

 **S3:** WHAT

 **S4:** sorry man. Idk why he’s here though, unless he knows I’m SM??

 **S2:** woah that’s a problem

 **SM:** major problem, I’m headed that way, I called in sick anyways

 **BT:** I WANT TO COME

 **DD:** I WANT YOU TO SLEEP

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : Red what does it feel like to have finally found your long-lost son?

 **DD:** he’s not mine. why do I have to keep saying this?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : because you’re lying and we all know it

 **DD:** I am literally not.

 **BT:** IS IT VERTICAL TIME YET???

 **DD:** I just said no. You want to hear it from Fogs?

 **BT:** YES

 **S2:** lol we’re keeping you Invisa-man.

 **S3:** Okay but Miles is this guy who is disgracing my good name at least good at what he’s doing or is this another Cory situation???

 **S4:** sorry louis. He’s pretty bad. He’s calling himself Spiderman’s disciple. My principal is calling the cops.

 **S3:** man

 **S3:** I’ve always heard that imitation is the greatest form of flattery but this just seems like an insult.

 **S3:** wait

 **S3:** SM do I have to go fight this guy???

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh now this is interesting

 **S2:** Imma go with yeah

 **S3:** goddamnit

 **BT:** HEY FRIENDS GUESS WHO’S VERTICAL :D

 **SM:** OH MY GOD SAM COME WITH ME TO CHEER LOUIS ON.

 **DD:** I cannot believe this is happening

 **DD:** but I’m seriously going to have to be the voice of reason here

 **DD:** Samuel, if you are fit to leave the room then you are fit for practice

 **BT:** nevermind everyone! I am unfortunately still incapacitated! And there is madman in this house who is threatening me with a stick! Please send help asap!

 **S2:** adaksdjfas;dkfl I LOVE YOU

 **S3:** Spidey, I’m taking a half day I suddenly have food poisoning where can I meet you

 **S4:** my school??

 **S3:** where’s your school?

 **S4:** in Brooklyn??

 **S3:** Thank you miles, that’s very helpful. Spidey?

 **SM:** I gotchu louis, sending you a pin now

 

 

Peter got to the block in front of the school first and then found himself gazing in awe at a short, squat guy in a super shiny version of Louis’s suit, boots and all. He held a neon green poster board with the words “Spiderman is a Fraud” written on it in his hands and was putting his back into shaking it above his head, to the complete disinterest of the school security officer observing him out front.

“Dude, why are these guys obsessed with calling you a fake?” Louis asked when he came up behind Peter, pulling at his collar and tie.

Peter had half a mind to tell him to write to his union about unsafe work practices. It was fucking boiling. To be made to wear a tie in this weather was cruel and unusual punishment.

“I dunno, I imagine they don’t really know how else to insult me,” Peter said.

“Yeah, the whole, ‘Spiderman is a fraud’ thing doesn’t jive well with the whole, ‘I am Spiderman’s disciple’ thing,” Louis pointed out.

Well, they weren’t exactly sacrificing the brains of the operation to the heat, now were they, Louis?

“What’s their endgame?” Louis asked.

“Well, _apparently_ , the former bossman wanted to demoralize me to the point where I felt the urge to run security for their drug operation,” Peter explained, “But I’m thinking it might be a little more than that. You don’t chase one vigilante into Police Plaza with guns and an SUV for drugs. And you sure as hell don’t try to shoot up Stark Industries without a damn good reason.”

Those guys who had crossed Mr. Stark were in for the worst kind of jailtime.

Louis hummed.

“Maybe the guy behind it is some kind of vigilante collector,” he hypothesized. “Maybe he’s like the old man from _Up_ who lives in a blimp and collects weird birds, except instead of birds, they’re vigilantes.”

Peter needed a second to work through the many levels of that.

“You’re totally right,” he decided. “Fucker’s trying to collect Spideys for his grand exhibition.”

“We’ve gotta stop him,” Louis said.

“Agreed,” Peter said, “Commencing Operation Kevin. Ready on three.”

 

 

“My god, S3, who do we have here?” Peter gasped as loud as he could in the middle of the street. He’d stuffed himself into his suit and was already _dying_. God, come on. How many versions would he have to make before he found one which wasn’t suffocating in heat.

“But Spidey, it must be my long-lost twin!” Louis also gasped, popping up at his side to catch the dramatic arm that Peter held out for him.

Folks walking on the other side of the street started to stop and stare.

The imitator froze. The security guard next to him’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead.

“Your long-lost twin! How could I have forgotten?” Peter called obnoxiously. He was apparently loud enough to inspire the second and third floors of the school to open their windows a little wider to see what was going on.

“Spiderman!” the imitator finally snapped when he was unfrozen. “You’re dead!”

Ah, this again. Fun times. Good memories.

Peter slapped his hands onto his face and screeched back, “I’m DEAD?”

Stopped the guy right in his tracks.

“Yeah?” he said.

“OH MY GOD. S3! S3, I’ve died,” Peter called. “Hold me, I’ve died! I’ve not even named a successor!”

Louis grabbed Peter’s yearning, searching hands and pulled them close to his chest.

“Don’t worry, Spidey,” he promised to the street, “ _I’ll_ be your successor.”

“Will you?” Peter sobbed. “Will you carry this burden for me?”

Miles was probably slamming his head against a wall upstairs in secondhand embarrassment, which could mean only one thing.

Go _harder_.

“I will,” Louis promised.

“And your twin?” Peter sobbed, sinking to his knees on the concrete, pulling Louis down with him.

“He’ll help me,” Louis swore over his heart. He then jerked his head up and stared longingly at the imitator who was horrified. Louis held out a hand his way. “You’ll help me, right?”

The guy didn’t know what to do.

Peter lowered himself until he was almost laying on the pavement, held up only by Louis’s embracing arms.

“It’s getting dark, S3,” he half-shouted.

“No, Spidey, not yet,” Louis shouted back. Then, desperately reaching out for the imitator, he cried, “You’ve killed him, man! You’ve killed him! At least come and help me. The whole city depends just on us now!”

Peter let himself go limp in Louis’s arms and Louis made a show of screaming and sobbing, then laying his forehead against Peter’s chest. After a beat, to his surprise—and no doubt to Louis’s--he heard the whole fucking street break out into uproar.

People just went for it, screaming at the imitator. Wailing.

“Louis,” Peter whispered, “Did we go too hard?”

“It’s the kids, man,” Louis whispered back shaking with laughter. “I think they’re in on it.”

Now that he mentioned it, the voices were rather high-pitched. Shrieking for the loss of Spiderman. Calling the imitator a murderer. Crying so fucking loudly, the only way to get that kind of clear volume was for someone to be leaning out a window.

Mixed in among the voices were those of a few teachers trying to tell people to calm down and bring it in, but alas, highschoolers could not be stopped.

Some of the older kids started swearing and a bunch of them started cajoling the imitator to go right his wrong. They shouted over each other until the guy, out of horror, desperation and peer pressure, stumbled forward and collapsed onto his knees beside Louis.

“I’m so sorry,” the guy cried. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—Oh god, I killed him. OH GOD.”

He touched Peter and it took everything Peter had not to go stiff and slap this idiot’s hand away.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry, Spidey. I’m so sorry,” the imitator sobbed. “It wasn’t supposed to be happen like this.”

 “It’s too late,” Louis told the man, putting on his most distraught tone, “He’s gone, man. Gone. You’ve gotta help us. We need someone to take on his powers.”

A pause.

“Wh-what?”

“You gotta kiss him,” Louis said and Peter almost actually died because he couldn’t fucking laugh.

“I—dude. You can’t be—”

“TIME’S RUNNING OUT,” Louis shouted. “FUCKING DO IT. We _need_ a Spiderman. The city will collapse without a Spiderman.”

The imitator panicked.

“I can’t—but I—I—”

“Do you want to help or not?” Louis barked. “Aren’t you Spiderman? This is what Spiderman does. I can’t do it, I’m not strong enough. It’s gotta be you.”

“Oh my god, okay,” the imitator whimpered, sounding like he was on the verge of tears.

“Wait!” Barked a new voice.

Aha! Miles! A glorious entry indeed. He must have scrambled into his suit somewhere between head-slamming.

“I can help,” Miles announced theatrically, “ _I’m_ the next Spiderman. I’ll do it for Spidey. And for the city.”

The crowd of young Brooklynites behind and above him went wild. Miles was absolutely the favorite Spiderman in this part of the city. He probably came in right below Cap these days in terms of popularity. People were already spray-painting their Spidey action figures in his image.

The imitator was shocked.

“You’re—you’re Spiderman?” he asked.

“Move aside,” Miles said.

“But you’re just a kid,” the imitator said.

Miles reached over and dropped a solemn hand onto his shoulder.

“Yes,” he half-shouted, and the upper floors of his school quieted down so that they could hear what happened next. “But with great power, comes great responsibility. I’m ready for this.”

The whole school burst into raucous applause.

“Oh my god,” the imitator whispered. “You’re not actually gonna—”

“Aaaaaand, scene,” Louis said.

Peter popped right back up and someone fucking screamed. He gave the folks watching on all sides a wave.

“It’s all good folks, we’re just practicin’ for our annual fourth of July skit, don’t mind us!” he called to them.

The security guard over by the fence clutched at his chest. The imitator stayed sat there on his heels, just gaping. Really appreciating that nice, warm feeling of having been had publicly. Peter wriggled out of his reach and then stood up, brushing himself off. The pavement was hot. His ass was so sweaty.

Louis popped up with him and that left the man staring up into the empty masks of three Spiderman, all standing with hands on their hips. The students and passersby chattered and laughed all around them.

“So, friend,” Peter said, “You wanna talk? Or do we want to do it again?”

The guy carried on gaping and then numbly evaluated his options.

“Are you gonna hurt me?” he finally asked.

“Define ‘hurt,’” Louis said.

 

 

The man claimed that his boss was the main security man for someone even bigger than Meriwether back in Chicago and that he’d been tasked with trying to draw Peter out into the open so that one of his associates could try to negotiate him into going to Chicago. The natural question Peter had next was what the fuck was going on Chicago that warranted the eventual application of a Spiderman over there?

“These people—the guys who hired me—they’re good people,” the imitator insisted. “They want to help us regular folks.”

Good…drug dealers? Like. Good ones? Sorry, Peter was misunderstanding here. He knew plenty of well-meaning drug dealers who did that shit for their families and whatnot, but the kind of drug dealers who could afford heads of security?

Nah.

In Peter’s experience those were the Very Bad drug dealers. The worst drug dealers, actually. The kind who slid effortlessly into human trafficking given the opportunity.

“Please, you have to understand, we don’t have a Spiderman,” the man said. “We _need_ a Spiderman. And a Daredevil. And a Luke Cage or an Iron Fist or—”

Woah, hold up. Those were all street-level names.

“Listen, pal, I get that something big is a-brewing here,,” Peter negotiated, “But if your guys actually wanted to borrow someone like me for a little while to get whatever it is under control in your city, then they would have come and talked to me like anyone else. They would _not_ have chased me through Chinatown guns-blazin’ or gone out of their way to fucking insult me or my team, you feel me?”

The imitator nodded miserably.

“We just—we needed to do something,” he said. “It’s so hard to find you. And you always run away.”

Right. So.

Two things.

“Okay, so one, I am a red and blue target 365 days of the year, it is not hard to find me. Although, for future reference, if you leave a Monster and a slurpee out on the sidewalk and say my name three times, I will be there, guaranteed. And two, since when did bullets signal an intent for cooperation?” Peter demanded.

The guy shook his head.

“It isn’t my job to question these things,” he said. “I don’t know what else they’ve tried doing.”

Alright, sure. What the fuck ever.

“Take me to your leader,” Peter threatened.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, let me guess: because you don’t know him,” Peter deadpanned.

The guy sighed.

“It’s an organization,” he admitted, “Names change all the time, the best I can give you is my direct superior’s.”

That, my dear, that would be _grand._

 

 

The guy hadn’t known that he was standing in front of Miles’s school, he’d just thought it was a school and was in the middle of Brooklyn, and word on the street was that there was a Spiderman who patrolled in Brooklyn most of the week. So that was a relief.

Less of a relief was the name that the man had given Peter and Louis, which was Taylor Greenfeld.

Peter googled Mr. Greenfeld and came up with an industrial parts manufacturer based out of Chicago. His name was on a lot of products which didn’t exactly look kosher to Peter.

He didn’t know exactly what they were, but he happened to know a guy who definitely would.

 

 

“Oh, this guy,” Mr. Stark said, scrolling through pictures. “Yeah, he’s a dick. Thought he was getting into the chemistry side of things, though.”

“Does he supply the army?” Peter asked him.

“Mm, tried to,” Mr. Stark said. “Didn’t pan out for him, required a bigger facility than he had available. The fuck’s he doing working for some drug lord? Man’s got plenty of money.”

“Maybe he’s in debt?” Peter offered.

“Maybe my ass,” Mr. Stark grumbled.

Peter didn’t know what that meant, but Mr. Stark had seemingly infinite and terrifying knowledge of most of the other humans in his tax bracket, so Peter decided to leave that alone.

“Any chance you can have a chat with him?” Peter asked.

Mr. Stark looked at him over the top of the monitor and then groaned.

“I hate Illinois,” he announced. “Nothing but corn, Pete. Not a damn thing out there but corn. And all people talk about is that damn corn.”

“Your sacrifice is a service to mankind,” Peter assured him.

 

 

Peter went back home and collapsed on the couch. Then he dragged himself off for a second to liberate himself from the sweat-soaked prison that was his shirt. Then he re-collapsed.

Hot.

It should be illegal how hot it was.

He needed a shower.

 

 

 **BT:** hey Spidey, so I know you were talking to the Tin Can about this whole Greenfeld thing, but I think I found something which might be of interest to you?

 **S2:** aren’t you supposed to be on bedrest?

 **BT:** yes and I am currently in bed. Resting. With an electronic device

 **S3:** The tin can??

 **S4:** I LOVE IT

 **S4:** I want it. I’m making a Tin Can shirt.

 **SM:** Sam that is beyond lame.

 **BT:** you’re welcome

 **BT:** more importantly, **[link]**

**BT: [link]**

**BT: [link]**

**DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : hey I know him. the green one

 **SM:** a job?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh yeah someone wanted him hung by the toes and I ain’t touching no one’s grimy ass feet for no less than 10k

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I got standards

 **S2:** you have 2 standards

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : no I got a list. You want it?

 **S2:** yes

 **SM:** girl you do not want that on your hard drive. no wade. We’re good thanks

 **S4:** woah, just looked at the links. Chicago is going crazy. It’s like it was here before you came home, Spidey.

 **SM:** holy shit yeah. Jesus

 **DD:** what is the tin can?

 **S3:** it’s an Ironman joke, DD.

 **DD:** oh that’s pretty good actually

 **BT:** :D

 **DD:** is this your business?

 **BT:** yes

 **DD:** then it’s not funny anymore

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : red you cannot treat your son like this

 **DD:** he’s not my son

 **BT:** I’m foggy’s son

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : oh I see

 **DD:** I cannot

 **DD:** listen I have wedding favors to make

 **DD:** where is my wedding favor party

 **SM:** oh shit that’s us. Yeah okay, DD. We’re helping your mom, yeah?

 **S2:** Is she the devil’s wife? How does a nun produce baby devils? Is she the nun from the Conjuring 2?

 **DD:** did you just call my dad satan?

 **S2:** yah

 **DD:** wow

 **BT:** is she nice? Is this a horizontal activity?

 **DD:** you are staying right where you are

 **S3:** yo, guys, seriously. Read those articles. Something is really wrong with Chicago. They need some help.

 **SM:** reading

 **SM:** got a bad feeling about this

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : sounds FUN

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : K placing bets that our cutie pies from the other day are capitalizing off of this?

 **DD:** taking bets on there being a kingpin

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : ooooh $1.20 that there is

 **DD:** coward

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : alright make it $3.60 I’m liking my chances

 **DD:** I’d bet my life on it

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : WOAH-HO. NOW REDTHEW

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : That is talk that I like

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : let’s go to the windy city, just you and me, you sweet little thing. We can show them all how it’s done

 **DD:** Or

 **SM:** I’m freaking out guys, these people are probably trying to catch us to throw us onto their side of whatever crime war is going on over there. Fuck, no wonder they’ve been so persistent

 **DD:** Or

 **S2:** it does explain why they keep using a bunch of different tactics too. like, one of them has to work, right? But they don’t know enough about NYC vigilantes to know how to approach them. It might also be that our Meriwether guy is on a different team from the Greenfeld guy. Or maybe he’s a double agent for different syndicates or smth?

 **S3:** Can I just say that I really do not want to leave NYC atm? I just looked it up it’s nearly 13 hrs to drive to chicago

 **D2:** seconding that

 **DD:** OR, MOTHERFUCKERS

 **BT:** boss is talking everyone else please shut up

 **SM:** sorry DD

 **S2:** yeah sorry we’re listening

 **S3:** ^

 **S4:** ^

 **D2:** ^

 **DD:** thank you

 **DD:** do you know who happens to be a good mid-western boy who also happens to be a local vigilante?

 **S2:** cap

 **S4:** he’s from Brooklyn, Angel. Everyone knows that.

 **S2:** he looks like a good midwestern boy. They’d take him in a heartbeat.

 **SM:** OH MY GOD DD, YOU’RE SO RIGHT

 **DD:** yes thank you. I will call him.

 **S2:** Wait who is it?

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : hawkeye

 **S2:** WHAT

 **S3:** dude what

 **S4:** no he lives in brooklyn too

 **S2:** listen bitsy, not everyone lives in fucking Brooklyn okay?

 **S4:** no, you’re right, only the people who matter do

 **S2:** I’m gonna put grit in your suit next time I see you. gonna put it in the toes you little shit

 

 

 **DD:** have spoken to hawkeye

 **DD:** he is receptive

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : boooooooo

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : and here I was planning a romantic getaway

 **BT:** uh

 **BT:** is that the guy downstairs crying over the dogs?

 **BT:** *That’s* Ms. Bishop’s mentor?

 **DD:** I told you to be grateful for me, didn’t I?

 **SM:** he’s a mess but he’s really good at what he does

 **DD:** He says he’ll go check it out, he’s got a job out around the lakes anyways. Will report back.

 **DD:** in the meantime. Wedding favors.

 

 

After such a busy and emotionally trying week, Peter said fuck it and took Saturday off to languish and watch hours upon hours of Ghosthunters. Then, when he was good and paranoid, he went off to have dinner with May at this new raw food place she’d found. She was enthusiastic. Peter was unimpressed.

He didn’t trust anywhere which bordered its windows with silk flowers unless those flowers were three years old or older. Those flowers ought to be in a stage of perpetual rot. Only then could such an establishment be trusted.

May asked him how he’d been lately and he told her that he’d made a new friend. He told her about Sam and then mentioned the shit going down in Chicago and he very carefully did not tell her about all the people who were trying to shoot him along the way.

She asked him what he was wearing to Matt’s wedding and he laid himself out and the table and murmured, “goddamnit.”

 

 

Sunday saw a little bit of anxiety, just the slightest breath of it, which was blown smoothly away by MJ and Ned trying to remember the last time they’d been to church. Ned’s family was very religious. MJ’s casually religious, they went to church for the community more than anything else.

Peter considered his upbringing to be not especially religious, but highly spiritual. Despite Ben’s occasional attempts to secularize their home.

Ben was, according to May, like Peter’s dad in this respect. He’d been indulgent but had given very little credence to spiritualism of most types. He’d been happy to view such things as part of people’s cultures and maybe even a symptom of the human condition, but he’d never been down on participating and he wasn’t so sure that his brother, should he ever return from wherever he was, would be thrilled about Peter being brought up to believe in the power of herbs and stones, and so on.

If that was the case, Peter remembered thinking at around nine years old, then he wasn’t interested in this so-called dad of his. No dad of his would reject these things which were so clearly important to May and to the ways of the earth.

Peter could reflect on that now with just a lick of guilt. There was no reason to direct that anger towards a guy who’d given his life for Peter’s safety. That was a little unfair.

Still though, churches were a little intimidating. Peter always felt a bit like someone was going to jab a finger at him from a stony corner and cry out ‘Witch! A witch!’

Scary.

Also, Matt’s mom?

Terrifying.

She was a bundle of rage tied up in a habit and she was perhaps the only person on the planet who could bully Matt into doing her bidding.

Wade seemed to adore her. For this reason, but also because she had a zero tolerance policy towards arrogance and hubris and she walked around merrily taking people’s metaphysical knees out from under them when they got a little too proud.

And yet, somehow, St. Agnes’s had seen that and said, ‘ah, yes. This woman? A mother.’

Sister Maggie had raised and looked after probably hundreds of babies and children and teenagers. She’d been at that kid’s home for nearly forty years.

The fact that her own son was around forty years old was not lost on anyone who knew of the relationship there.

The fact that she could raise all these hundreds of kids and yet not her own single one was uncomfortable to those same people.

But Matt seemed to have taken that in stride. Peter had been bopping around, around the time that Matt had learned that he actually did have a living parent. He hadn’t spoken to Peter about it until he was nineteen or twenty. He’d apparently told Wade earlier because he’d needed help processing. Since then, Peter had only seen Matt and his mother together once. He’d been surprised to see what Matt’s idea of being a son to this woman looked like. It was not what Peter had expected. Maybe he’d forgotten who he was dealing with, but he’d imagined that Matt would do his meek, gentle, awkward thing. Trying to please the Sister.

Alas. T’was not to be.

Matt agitated the fuck out of Sister Maggie with what had to be a hereditary talent for nearly violent callousness. He initiated physical contact with her, which they both despised. He moaned and groaned and made a huge deal out of anything she asked him to do and took all her barbed verbal assaults with the air of a man on the verge of a hiss.

Peter got the impression that Matt tended to view the Sister as more of a mix between a teacher and an aunt than anything else. She cared for him deeply and he respected her just as deeply, but hell would freeze over before either of them admitted it.

To that end, they swung violently between being stiffly formal with each other and brutally casual. Sister Maggie called Matt ‘Matthew’ and ‘Matty’ with nothing in between besides insults. Matt called the Sister only that. Neither of them acknowledged the other as ‘son’ or ‘mother’ in the others’ presence, although it seemed that they were okay using these labels to other people.

It was a relationship hard to understand. One that Peter wasn’t sure how to convey to the others without having to delve into Matt’s personal history with this woman. Really, it was easier to just let the copycats experience that topsy-turvy world for themselves.

 

 

Peter and MJ and Ned arrived to the church and found Foggy waiting outside for them with a very happy Sam who had been temporarily released from his bed prison. He was pale as hell, very careful with his movements, and wearing his prosthetic lenses. The way that he kept his hand on Foggy’s arm suggested to Peter that he was maybe having a hard day vision-wise.  

When Foggy went to give MJ and Ned a hug, Peter offered his own arm to Sam and he smiled at him before shaking his head.

“It’s light out,” he said. “I’m okay.”

Alright, cool.

“No gangrene?” Peter asked him.

“Not as of yet,” Sam said. “Although Haze keeps trying to lick the wound.”

Awwww, Hazel. Just doing her best.

Actually, speaking of which.

“Where are the dogs?” Peter asked.

Foggy made a sad, dry sob towards the heavens. Sam’s grin widened.

 

 

“Oh my god,” Ned breathed when they emerged on the other side of the church where Sister Maggie had alleged set up a favor-making space.

There were three golden retrievers scattered around the grass around the play space outside the church. So it seemed that, in exchange for investigating the Chicago problem, the one-eyed Lucky had been temporarily added to the Nelson-Murdock brood.

Lucky was kind of stupid compared to the guide dogs, though, and, in chasing after Hazel, had set about turning himself in a thousand circles and making himself sick.

Bless him.

He was just thrilled to have canine companionship. While Clint was a more or less decent pet owner, in Lucky’s eyes, he was a heartless bastard who refused to adopt for him a sibling to eat trash with. And despite the sickness, Peter had never seen him happier.

It seemed kind of fitting that a half-blind dog would be besties with two guide dogs. Or rather, one guide dog, since Tuesday had tired of this middle-aged whippersnapper and his annoying, teenage companion and had abandoned them to receive affection from Sam, who, Peter came to understand, was her household favorite.

Matt had accepted this as according to Sam, he was also Matt’s favorite.

Sam apparently had decided that he was everyone’s favorite. And Foggy was either too charmed or too tired to argue with that and so left them all to go watch Matt break strings of rock candy into smaller pieces at a nearby picnic table.

Shortly after, the shrieks of Angel and Miles discovering the dogs alerted them all to the copycats’ arrival.

 

 

Matt and Foggy’s wedding favors were little jars of rock candy with a sticker label and a ribbon. The jar went into a silver organza bag with a tiny, metallic painted plastic dinosaur, which, Peter was informed, was an imperative part of Matt and Foggy’s love story.

Now, he had endured Matt and Foggy’s love story many, many times. And he had never been informed of any dinosaurs, so he was skeptical. Matt told him that he wouldn’t understand since it was before his time which was ridiculous. Matt wasn’t that much older than him.

“We had them on our desk divider during our last internship,” Foggy explained to ruin Matt’s cryptic field day. “Right before we made the first Nelson & Murdock.”

And that was.

Alright, that was pretty cute.

“We also had a devil bobblehead. We used him as our judge in law school,” Matt added. The frowned and asked, “Where did that thing go anyways?”

“Trashed it,” Foggy said with zero remorse, “It was tacky.”

The copycats basked in Matt’s devastation.

“I loved Judge Bobble,” he lamented.

“That’s ‘cause you’re tacky,” Foggy sniffed.

 

 

Sister Maggie appeared about five minutes into the festivities with the soft sweep of her skirts. She settled herself peacefully next to Foggy to start filling jars with little colorful bits of rock candy. She said nothing to no one and Matt appeared to have forgotten that most of the folks present didn’t know her.

It just got more and more awkward the longer they worked until Sam finally cleared his throat and said, “Sister, have you met our friends?”

Sam deserved a Nobel peace prize. This was why Tuesday loved him. Had to be. She could smell the peace on him.

Sister Maggie finally appeared to notice all these people at her lovingly organized picnic table.

“I am aware of them,” she said. “Hello.”

At which point, Matt’s brain kicked back in.

“Oh, my bad,” he said. “Apologies, Sister these are the new members of our rag tag team of morons. The small one on this side is Angel, the small one on that side is Miles, the tall one across from Peter—you remember Peter?—is Louis, next to him, David, and then you know Ned and Michelle. The rest of you, this is my mother. You can call her Sister Maggie.”

“The mama nun,” Angel said seriously.

Peter felt a need to lay his head on the table. Sister Maggie showed no offense, though.

“Thank you all for coming to help,” she said evenly.

“Oh sure,” Dave said, “You must be so happy that your son is finally having a wedding.”

Sister Maggie’s face did the thing which made it painfully clear to anyone who knew him that Matt was her son. Her eyebrow inched incrementally up throughout this statement as it was said and then slowly dropped while she worked through every possible scathing retort to that seemingly benign question and dismissed each as not good enough to convey her feelings on the matter.

“It will be a very nice affair,” she settled on.

Matt jerked his head towards her in alarm that literally no one else at the table understood.

“We can still invite your sister,” he said. “She’d have time to get here.”

“I would rather suffocate,” Sister Maggie said simply, plucking another bag out of the pile on her end of the table.

MJ covered her mouth and gave Foggy wide, concerned eyes across the table. He closed his own and shook his head in defeat.

That’s just how they are, the gesture said.

 

 

 


	9. call me beep me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yourself isn’t good enough, Parker, the tugging whispered.  
> You’ve got to be more.

It took some nudging for Sister Maggie to warm up to the crowd.

Angel leaned over the table when she’d gotten up to go get drinks from inside for everyone and stage-whispered,

“Red, she’s like you but _harder_.”

Matt didn’t get it.

“We’re nothing alike,” he said.

Foggy stopped tying ribbons to stare at nothing in the play space in the center of the yard. Reflecting. Possibly regretting. MJ giggled and started tying ribbons faster.

“No, no you definitely are,” Angel said.

Matt huffed at this.

“Exaggeration,” he claimed.

Oh, no, buddy. For you? Think more along the lines of denial.

 

 

Wade couldn’t join them because he was busy suffering from the heat but he also said he had to go get a suit since his were all vastly inadequate for the week’s task ahead of him. He’d decided he was wearing pink and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Foggy thought that that was fitting since the table decorations would be peonies.

“Maybe he’ll camouflage in and we’ll lose him,” he thought out loud.

“ _You’ll_ lose him,” Matt moaned.

“If we lose him, we’ll just make Bitsy enter camo-mode and go find him,” Angel said. Miles was offended.

“That’s not how it works,” he pointed out. Angel ignored him.

“Are you guys gonna say vows?” she asked the semi-happy couple. Matt lifted an eyebrow and paused in fanning his face with a piece of cardboard to defer to Foggy on that one.

“Are we saying vows?” he asked.

Seemed a little late to be asking to Peter, but what the fuck did he know?

“I already said my vows,” Foggy said. “Said ‘em in front of the judge, what? Fifteen years ago?”

“That’s an oath, Fogs,” Matt said. “We all said an oath. I mean vows. Do you want my vows? I vow to never inflict another wedding upon you from this day out.”

“Accepted,” Foggy said.

“No,” Matt scolded, “You don’t accept them, you just hear ‘em.”

“Says who?”

“I dunno. God?”

“Fuck god.”

Matt lunged across the table to slap a hand over Foggy’s face in horror.

“Oh, no. By all means, fuck him,” Sister Maggie said as she emerged from the inside of the church with bucket of sloshing blue solo cups.

Angel raised an eyebrow and then made eye-contact with Peter and nodded sagely.

 

 

Dave, out of the kindness of his heart and no longer able to cope with the heavy silence that once again fell upon the group following the distribution of refreshment, made the mistake of asking Sister Maggie what Matt had been like as a wee one.

He couldn’t have known how loaded that question was.

“I don’t know, I was only around him when he was good and annoying,” Sister Maggie said. Matt sneered at her and Peter felt himself tense up at the potential of an explosive argument right there at the table. MJ swooped in though.

“Tell us the worst Matt story you have,” she requested brazenly.

Matt mugged at her instead.

“I was a perfect child,” he said.

“Doubt it,” Angel said.

“Where is your evidence?” Matt accused.

Angel gestured to all of him.

“I don’t have any bad Matt stories,” the Sister said. “He was a difficult child, but we didn’t blame him for that. And besides, he didn’t sneak drugs or alcohol into the place, so our scale was very lenient.”

“Okay,” Ned said smoothly, “Then how about Mr. Murdock? Do you have any bad Mr. Murdock stories?”

A pause.

Matt rubbed knuckles across his jaw awkwardly.

“Sister, you don’t have to—” he started.

“When Jack decided to propose to me, he lost the ring,” Sister Maggie said with a smirk.

Lost—he _lost_ it?

“Yep. Dropped out of his pocket on the way home from a match,” she said, almost gleefully. “I thought he was gonna pass out when he realized it.”

Oh god. Peter felt so bad for Matt’s dad.

“He found it, though?” MJ asked.

“Nope,” Sister Maggie said. “Didn’t matter, in the end. He had his Nan’s claddagh and that fit just fine. Anyways, we were married in no time, didn’t need anything besides a band after that. That’s this one.” She gestured at the ring that Matt wore. “I kept them after he passed. I’m glad it has a new home now. Was beginning to think it would stay cold forever.”  

Awwww.

“Yeah, actually,” Foggy said. “The guy I took it to, to be resized had to bang it back into shape. There was a huge dent in it. Do you happen to know what the hell happened to it?”

Sister Maggie looked up thoughtfully.

“Yes. He smashed it against his brother’s face,” she said. “Turns out the ring gave before that man’s head did.”

Silence.

“Such nice weather,” Matt said.

Holy shit, Matt. What the hell was the matter with your people?

“Did he, uh, deserve it?” Angel chanced. “The other guy?”

“Who, Tom? Oh yeah. He deserved it,” the Sister said. She tipped her head towards Matt, “You were too small to remember. He came up uninvited to see you on your second birthday. He and Jackie hadn’t spoken for, oh, maybe two or three years at that point. I thought they were both going to jail from that mess. But no, turns out a man breaking through a door and threatening a child gives you a great self-defense argument—although I’m sure the puppy eyes helped.”

Matt grimaced.

“Such great weather,” he observed a little helplessly to everyone’s horrified staring.

“Dude,” Dave said, “Your old man was hardcore.”

“A puppy,” Sister Maggie repeated.

“He was a great dad,” Matt said desperately.

“He was a good man,” Sister Maggie agreed sagely.

 

 

They left the Nelson and Murdocks when all the favors were done. Sister Maggie forced them all to take cans of soda with them and then Foggy forced them to take the leftover rock candy and the hospitality on all sides of this equation was stifling.

When they were a few blocks away, everyone finally deflated and shook out their shoulders.

“That shit’s _crazy_ ,” Angel said. “No wonder Red’s fucked up.”

“He doesn’t mean to be,” Peter defended weakly.

“Yeah, no. He didn’t have a chance,” Louis said. “His mom is terrifying and his dad dented a ring on his _brother’s face_ , man. Who does that?”

“The guy was a professional boxer, what else do you expect?” Dave said. “My pops used to be one of his fans, you know. They used to say he fought like the devil.”

Yeah, no shit.

“Are curses hereditary?” Angel asked the group at large.

“Poverty’s hereditary,” MJ said before anyone else could jump in. “And it’s not funny. That kind of violence isn’t a curse, it’s a result of having next to no resources and the constant stream of stress that comes with being poor.”

Peter’s neck felt tight at the suggestion.

Baby Matt and his dad could have used a local vigilante in that moment, couldn’t they?

Actually, no.

What Baby Matt and his dad really could have used back then was a Daredevil.

Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

 

 

 

Sleeping was nigh impossible that night.

Once Peter got to thinking about cycles of violence and poverty and trauma, he couldn’t stop. Never had been able to. Night was the worse time for it. No distractions, only this nagging sensation tugging at him when he went still in the quiet--when he stopped shuffling around the covers. It felt like someone pulling at the bottom of the spidey sense. Someone tugging at it and asking, ‘hey, isn’t there something else you can do? Can you be more? How can you be more? Yourself isn’t good enough, Peter. Be more.’

He flopped over in bed and threw the covers off. It was too hot for covers.

Yourself isn’t good enough, Parker, the tugging whispered.

You’ve got to be more.

You’ve got to be _more._

But boundaries, he told it. I have to keep boundaries now. I got hurt last year and hurt the people around me because of it. I don’t want to hurt those people like that ever again.

I can’t fix everything and everyone. I’m only one person.

Just one person.

One extraordinary person.

One extraordinary person, granted great power.

And here he was laying in bed when someone was assaulting some present day baby Matt and his unbearably young father—no one had mentioned that afternoon that Matt was forty years old and his mom was barely pushing sixty.

No one mentioned that.

If Sister Maggie have been eighteen, nineteen, twenty when she’d carried the baby that she couldn’t raise, then Jack Murdock, not much older than her, would have been twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.

Twenty-four at the most when his brother had broken into his home and threatened him and his baby son. Twenty-four when he’d dented his wedding band on his own sibling’s face because there was no one looking out for people like him and baby Matt in this city.

Peter was twenty-six now.

He got out of bed.

 

 

Dr. Siemons hissed when he reported in for work the next morning. His eye was just about swollen shut.

“Peter, honey, what happened?” she asked him.

To her, he was just twenty-six, he knew. She was nine years older. She looked upon him like he looked upon Miles.

Mr. Stark had shown Peter the file of incident reports she’d written on him. They were detailed. They were concerned. They were each answered by Mr. Stark personally, saying that he had looked into the case and would be contacting the relevant authority if things progressed further.

Mr. Stark told Peter not to come into work when his face was a disaster. The other limbs, he could hide. But Peter had taken Friday off to agitate Sam, so he very well couldn’t take Monday, too.

“Some guy was laying into his gal outside my building,” he lied. Well, sort of. It had been a domestic situation. A gal laying into her guy, actually; she’d raised a damn baseball bat above her head.

Furthermore, it _had_ been outside _a_ building. Just not Peter’s building.

So really, he was looking at a 50-50 lie here. That made it an almost-truth.

“Peter, you need to just call the cops when that kind of thing happens,” Dr. Siemons said. “Did you go to an urgent care or something?”

Errrrrr nope.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said brightly. “They said to stop fucking touching it and take a couple of ibuprofen.”

Dr. Siemons was marginally relieved.

“Our auditor vanished into the ether,” she finally said once her once-over of Peter was complete. “We are in the clear for now. Mr. Stark said he left something in your box. It’s nasty, whatever it is, take gloves.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter chirped.

 

 

Mr. Stark left him a waterlogged blackberry with algae dripping in long cords from it in his mailbox. Peter appreciated the warning about the gloves.

Saanvi wanted to test it for radiation. Bo threatened him not to kill the algae on it—it was theirs. They’d seen it first.

Peter endured Bo scraping all the green filth off into a glass before huffing and taking himself, his black eye, and his shitty, radioactive blackberry back to his office.

 

 

Inside the blackberry was a note. Written by Hawkeye, saved only by the blackberry’s case. Where he’d found a blackberry in this day and age, Peter didn’t know, but that was Hawkeye for you. He was the weirdest kind of spy.

The note inside was typed and it said only ‘tracksuit mafia x 13’ which gave Peter pause. He got the mafia bit, that confirmed Angel’s suspicion that these were multiple groups of people trying to get at the Spidey team, but the first bit--

Tracksuit?

Like, running clothes?

Given Hawkeye’s cryptic message, Peter decided that he wasn’t comfortable with using his phone like a normal person at the minute, which meant that Peter was going to have to take the scenic route.

 

 

 **PP:** heeeeeeeey Katherine

 **KB:** oh its u

 **PP:** your teacher just left a half-rotten time capsule in my box at work 😂

 **KB:** good you deserve it

 **PP:** god and here I was trying to be nice

 **PP:** listen, everything’s gone to hell in Chicago and there’s like two billion crime families vying for power. Couple of them are starting to reach out to vigilantes outside the city to come fight for them.

 **PP:** Barton left me a fucking blackberry with some kinda code inside

 **PP:** do you know what the tracksuit mafia is?

 **KB:** oooooooooooooooooh do I

 **PP:** thank you please share

 **KB:** them’s the Russians

 **PP:** please tell me you’re lying

 **KB:** them’s the Russians 🎵🎵🎵

 **PP:** jfc

 **PP:** ok thanks

 **KB:** hey btw, did you know there’s already a group of avengers in and around Chicago?

 **PP:** sry what?

 **KB:** yep

 **KB:** clint is struggling

 **PP:** um?

 **KB:** he’s called me in for backup

 **PP:** wtf seriously?? How did he call you?

 **KB:** u ever seen a pager?

 **PP:** uh. No

 **KB:** me neither

 

Peter needed to pick this moment very carefully. Because questions like these sometimes gave Mr. Stark heartburn. He waited until the guy was mid-drink of coffee and said,

“Hey, Mr. Stark, have you ever heard of a pager?”

And reveled in the choking and following noise of despair.

 

 

Peter was now highly educated on pagers. And blackberries. And dinosaur phones. And a whole vast variety of pre-cellphone devices.

He didn’t want to be, but this is what he got for his hubris, so there they fucking were.

He grumbled and seethed at the fucking, sucking time _maw_ that had been and set about trying to figure out what there was to be done for two billion crime syndicates at war in Chicago.

He really didn’t want to go to Chicago.

He had work. He had a life. He had no car.

Flying was exhausting.

Matt’s wedding was one week away.

Under these conditions, getting Matt or any of the others to go with him to Chicago was going to be a nonstarter. Actually, Wade might go. Chicago was allegedly marginally closer than New York to Wade’s ancestral home, which Peter strongly suspected was somewhere in Ontario.

Wade held this secret close to his heart, but Peter had gone out of his way to listen to the accents of every goddamn province in Canada to crack it. And he was onto him, Wilson. He was onto him.

But anyways, yeah, Wade might go, if for nothing else to push a line of perps into the one the great lakes, but that didn’t solve the main issue here. Wade was good, but sending Wade into a city in chaos without guidance was like dropping a gas lighter into the middle of a load of dry brush. He would certainly destroy something, although whether or not that would be helpful was questionable.

Also, Wade was pretty dead set on going to Matt’s wedding. He’d alerted everyone in the group chat that he’d gotten his pink suit and to hold onto their underwear because he was lookin’ fine as hell.

It wasn’t just a pink suit. It was a baby-pink suit.

Peter couldn’t deal with that at the minute, even though it had been highly entertaining watching everyone try to describe the suit to Matt while misspelling every other word through of tears of laughter.

He just.

Wade, man.

 _Why_ are you like this?

Now MJ had decided that she was wearing orange which meant that Peter and Ned now had to wear orange and Peter did not deserve this, man. He was but an innocent, soft pale child. He and this orange suit were going to merge together to become one of those wiggly tube men out in front of car dealerships.

God.

People, man.

UGH. Chicago, man.

What the fuck was he gonna do?

 

 

Step one: ask the master of the Russian mob.

Also known as Enemy Number One. Or Two, or Five or whatever—Matt. Peter was asking Matt.

“I am not fucking with the Russians,” Matt said flat out. Sam popped up behind his shoulder in the doorway with a huge, hopeful smile. He edged forward just an eensy bit. Matt rounded on him before Peter could even got a syllable out. “ _You_ are not fucking with the Russians,” he said.

Sam pouted.

“No one is fucking with the Russians,” Peter said. “I am saying that Chicago is having a similar Russian mafia-esque situation to the one that you endured two thousand years ago. And so I, and Hawkeye and Hawkeye, would very much appreciate any insight you have on this.”

Matt’s look of disgust made his jaw jump.

“Okay,” he said, “Here’s the first thing you do, you listening?”

Peter nodded enthusiastically.

“Seduce the younger brother,” Matt said.

Peter could have slapped him.

“I’m being _serious_ , Double D,” he snapped.

“Me too,” Matt said with defensive hands. “I seduced the younger brother with hate, dragged him into a sewer and then left him there at his request—what else you want from me, Pete?”

“I want you to help—”

“Here’s my advice, kid: let Chicago handle it. This ain’t our problem. We’re New York vigilantes. If Chicago wants her own vigilantes, all power to ‘em. Rise up, ladies and gents, everyone’s waiting—you feel me?”

Like.

 _Yeah_.

But—

“No buts,” Matt said, manhandling Sam back behind him where he was safe from catching Peter’s bleeding heart syndrome. “Let ‘em handle it. Have faith, kiddo. Shit’ll sort itself out. We can’t be fighting everyone’s battles for them.”

Peter wanted to point out that Matt was technically fighting people’s battles from coast to fucking coast these days, but he had a feeling that he would only bring out the lawyer side and Peter was a scientist. He was not a lawyer. Matt could make Peter believe that the facts he offered were evidence against his own claim if he wanted to.

He had a twisted brain like that.

Peter crossed his arms.

“I can’t just sit back,” he said. “People are gonna get hurt.”

Matt’s irritation was increasing exponentially. He pulled himself up to his full height and crossed his own arms. He waited.

Peter puffed up, too.

Matt waited.

Sam looked worriedly up at his mentor and then at Peter. He touched a hand into the crook of Matt’s arm and didn’t say anything. Matt could probably feel his anxiety, but he gave no indication of noticing it.

“Boss,” Sam said, “We can’t stand by while people get hurt.”

Sam had a bullet wound in his side. Peter’s back teeth were struck with a flash of sourness at the reminder.

“If we don’t draw the line, no one will draw it for us,” Matt told him, but also Peter. He turned his head back to Peter. “If you want to go, Peter, I won’t stop you.”

‘But I will be disappointed,’ hung in the silence between them.

Peter sucked in a breath and clenched his jaw.

“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he said firmly.

“Peter, you won’t—”

“I don’t _want_ to disappoint you,” Peter repeated. “But I’m an Avenger. And I said—I _promised_ I’d help people in need.”

Matt sighed and the tension fell out of his shoulders. He uncrossed his arms and held one of them out in front of him. Peter knew this gesture. But he didn’t go.

“I can’t, Double D,” he said. “I promised.”

“Come here,” Matt told him.

“No, I—”

“Peter, come here. I’m not gonna ask again.”

The tone was harsh. The gesture was not.

Peter stepped forward.

He’d never be as tall as Matt. The hugs would always feel like this. Matt would always smell of something Peter couldn’t quite place. Something between leather and spice.

Peter pressed his cheekbone against Matt’s scratchy jaw. It was his turn to wait.

“Kiddo, it is not your job to save the world,” Matt said next to his ear “Boundaries, remember, bud?”

Yes, he remembered. Didn’t make it suck any less, those. Still, he took another breath and nodded gently.

“Boundaries,” he said.

Matt released him from the hug and squeezed his shoulder.

“If you want to help these people,” he said, “Start with working smarter, not harder. Find another way.”

Matt’s eyes were red from the glass of his shades. Sam was upset behind him.

It was probably hard to watch your mentor mentor someone else. Probably made Sam a little scared that Matt’s tone and frustration was or would be directed at him.

Peter hadn’t been in that situation before.

But he had been in this one.

He dropped his head and breathed.

In

1, 2, 3

Out

1, 2, 3

In

1, 2, 3

Think.

Think, Parker. Come on, think.

Be more than you are.

 

 

Be—

Wait.

Be more than you are?

Peter jerked his head up at Matt in awe.

“Oh my god,” he said. “I’m gonna start a mob.”

 

 

“Peter!”

Nope. No. Peter would not be persuaded out of this one. He had his golden idea and anyone who thought they were gonna take it from him were gonna have to pry that shit out of his cold, dead fingers.

“Peter this is crazy.”

Matt had literally asked his psycho sibling to stage a homicide attempt on Peter not that long ago. He had not a single leg to stand on here.

“It’s not gonna work, you can’t build a mob without being present, kid,” Matt said, grabbing at Peter’s elbow on the sidewalk. “Come on, I’m sure there’s another way.”

Peter took ahold of his hand and pulled it carefully away.

“Double D,” he said. “Trust me on this one. I’m not even gonna have to leave my house.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the oath Foggy is referring to is the one that lawyers take before they officially start practicing law. 
> 
> Also if you're a little confused about Jack's backstory there, you can take a look at my fic 'the Sprawl' which does a little more exploring of his character. Basically, he comes from an abusive family and so shut out basically the whole of them so as to protect Matt from their influences and as a last ditch effort to break the cycle of abuse in their family. 
> 
> Also damn I rewrote this chapter so many fucking times I was super frustrated but now I am excited.  
> (It might be a minute between updates for the next little while though since I am going to fall dramatically into my partner's arms in two days here, just a head's up!)


	10. pull the pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There had been a time in his life around fourteen years old when Matt had briefly considered joining the mob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi this chapter was inspired by the drive to get to the fucking wedding already.  
> Hopefully things will speed up from here. 
> 
> Just as a note, we are sneaking into Multiverse territory, so if you haven't read **under fire** or my **into the multiverse** series, you might be a little confused. If you have read that shit and are seeing new stuff, surprise!! Sneak peaks for that verse for you!
> 
> Anyways, Below is who's who with the names:
> 
> Peter = Inimitable Peter  
> Big Peter/B = Peter B. Parker  
> Blondie = ITSV Peter Parker  
> Benj/Noir = Noir  
> Funsize = Dumpster Fires Verse (DFV) Peter  
> Shortstack = In Technicolor Peter  
> Itsy = ITSV Miles  
> Bitsy = Inimitable Miles
> 
> The alternate universe character count will probably hop up for a hot minute in the coming chapter, but I'm pretty sure it'll go back down soon enough so if you're starting to feel overwhelmed, I promise it won't last too long.

There had been a time in his life around fourteen years old when Matt had briefly considered joining the mob.

He’d gotten it in his head in a moment of having absolutely nothing to do but vibrate in bed at night at the fourth foster home he’d had the pleasure of gracing.

He might have been a teensy bit on edge and under-stimulated in this particular home.

He might have been swinging like a drunk monkey from unspeakably depressed to uncontrollably manic in this particular home.

But regardless, his moment of epiphany had sent him rocketing straight up to sitting in that too-perfect bed at some time around two in the morning. He’d slapped his hands over his mouth to stifle the requisite ‘oh my _god_ ,’ that came with every true moment of enlightenment so as not to alert the Coraline-esqe parents downstairs of his wakefulness.

 _Why attack the nut’s shell when you could rot it from within?_ He’d thought, convinced in that moment that he was the most brilliant half-pint cult-warrior on the eastern seaboard. _I’ll join those bastards who killed Dad and take their knees out from under them one by one until **I’m** the boss. They won’t know what hit ‘em._

Except they would.

Because Matt had been a 5’2”, raggedy, redheaded terror at that point in his life. The only person who’d have missed his orange mop would have been himself. And he was 100% stupid enough to have gone out and gotten his ass captured by Sweeney and his gang, who would no doubt have realized real quick that Matt had some kind of enhancement, seeing as they were more than aware whose blind kid’s dad they’d killed in the last four years.

On the one hand, if Matt had actually followed through with this dastardly plan, he might have become a modern-day Phantom of the Opera-like character for Sweeney’s mob. A lonely assassin demanding payment in the form of screeching music and occasional human sacrifice from behind a crumbling church wall.

That could have been exciting.

Very dramatic if nothing else.

But on the other hand, it was much more likely that he’d have been shot in the head by those folks just like Dad had been.

And you know, there was kind of a poetic parallel in that.

Really, now that he thought about it, fourteen-year-old Matt may have been onto something here.

These were great choices.

For him. Not for Peter. Emphatically not for Peter.

Peter’s idea of becoming a mob boss was for sure going to involve an unbearably strong accent and a veritable colosseum of bad ideas. Whatever mob Peter thought he was going to amass without leaving home was going to look like half the grandmas in Queens with their cats stuffed inside their handbags, setting out into the street to defend that charming young man Spidey’s name.

And while that had a type of dramatic flair that Matt, as a shithead, could appreciate, Matt, as the veteran vigilante/mob wrestler here, had a moral responsibility to fucking _do something._

Goddamnit.

Come _on_. His wedding was so close even _he_ could see it.

It looked like a giant ball of fuzzy static that got warmer and warmer until it was towering over him in the form of Foggy’s white-hot heat threatening to leave his ass for not being able to control his impulses for the five days leading up to the vast white wedding he, himself, had been bitching about for exactly ten years.

It wasn’t gonna look good.

Good thing he wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Sammy,” he whispered a few hours later, standing over the kid on the living room fold-out bed with full fucking knowledge that backup would be attained without question.

Sam sniffed and mumbled, and his heart skipped a bit when he woke up. Not at Matt leaning over him, no. He was used to that by now. Probably by the dark. He wasn’t quite used to how dark his new dark was yet, bless him.

“Come on, kiddo. Up and at ‘em. We got info to collect,” Matt whispered.

 

 

Peter had this shit.

He hadn’t had any shit in month like he had this shit right now.

A mob.

What’s a mob?

No big deal, that’s what.

Technically, he already had a mob. Or at least a cult. Team Red was definitely a cult—regardless of whatever nonsense Matt would say about manifestos and hierarchies and charismatic leaders—whatever. It was a cult. And, really, mobs were just really big cults with weapons and deadly intent. Team Red had the weapons, but (barring Wade) not the intent. But it wasn’t like the mobsters in Chicago had to _know_ that. And anyways, maybe they were all a little busy with a certain former cult member’s nuptials, but that didn’t mean shit because guess what?

They weren’t the only Team Red.

Ah. Beautiful.

Thanks God, you’re really pulling through on this one for once.

 

 

 **PP:** Miles, my man, I need a favor

 **MM:** why are you texting me and me only

 **PP:** because I need a favor darling keep up

 **MM:** and if I say no?

 **PP:** I will leave you and all your teammates to Michelle’s mercy, up to and including her reaction to your potential failure at nationals

 **MM:** I never should have asked you for anything

**PP:** **😘😘😘**

**MM:** UGH

 **MM:** alright what is it?

 

 

Miles spent much more time with the Multiverse folks than Peter did. Peter worried about that a lot and often. He didn’t want Miles to rely on those guys too much since the universe (and the multiverse) was a cruel fucking place and it took away just as quickly and abundantly as it gave.

Itsy, the alternate Miles, and Gwen, the alternate Gwen Stacy, who Miles was so close with weren’t guaranteed to stick around forever. If Miles relied too much on them, then the evitable closing of the gap between all their verses would be not only crushing but unbelievably isolating for him.

Not to mention, all that verse jumping those kids did had to be bad for physics.

Peter didn’t know how or why, but it had to be.

He didn’t trust it.

He would rather view the multiverse connection as a tool. An interdimensional screwdriver if you will, whose absence, if it ever disappeared, would be inconvenient and a little sad, but otherwise inconsequential to Peter’s overall existence.

That said, he totally got the appeal.

The other Miles was lovely and brought out some of his Miles’s sweeter notes. They tucked their heads in together and giggled away in a mix of Spanish and English and slang Peter was too old to understand and they went on adventures to like, rescue all the pets of the city in both verses for a night.

Adorable.

The other Peters were pretty cool, too, Peter would admit.

Big Peter, or B as everyone else called him, was an oddly charming guy. He had a kind of old-man, cane-shaking grumpiness on top of what was definitely a Wade-influenced sense of humor and pettiness that made him fun to be around. Big Peter was afraid of no man. He’d seen it all, done it all, and he tended to view what to Peter would be wave upon wave of bad guys and perilous circumstances as major fucking inconveniences to him just trying to live his goddamn life.

Peter liked Big Peter a _lot_.

Blond Peter? Sometimes, Peter could take or leave him. Especially around the younger Spideys.

With them bopping around the place, he was like his Miles, all syrupy sweet and endearing and oh-so eager to help.

But when Peter got Blondie alone or somewhere where the kids were not, he got a lot more fun. His disaster side was pretty great. He was a lethal combination of extreme anxiety on top of hyper-competence which meant that he did extreme anxiety better than anyone else on his planet.

There were other Peters besides those two, Peter was aware. There was a 1930s Peter who everyone alternatively called ‘Noir’ and ‘Benj,’ who hid his terrible glasses, fidgety fingers, and Dear God levels of paranoia behind a black mask and a giant overcoat.

There was a fucking terrifying munchkin version of Peter himself who they all called ‘Funsize,’ who was young, naïve, and far too enthusiastic about life for Peter to tolerate for any significant amount of time.

There was, according to Blondie, a Peter exactly the same as Funsize except that he tended to go fucking feral and try to murder Blondie in anytime he hopped into the kid’s verse to try to help him out.

Peter had never wanted to meet another version of himself more.

There was also a Peter who Blondie had encountered who he claimed made him a little uncomfortable for reasons that Blondie struggled to articulate.

That was a lot of Peters and that alone would have probably been enough to give the impression of a Spidey mob kicking up dust in Chicago, but really, since they were already going, why not go harder?

Why stop at the Peters?

He met Miles in north Brooklyn around 11 at night and explained the plan.

No, their Team Red couldn’t go up to Chicago and start a mob war. But that didn’t mean that _a_ Team Red couldn’t go up and start a mob war. And if each Team Red took a night or two of the week and ensured that they were all seen passing the baton off to each other, so to speak, then people would think that there were two, three, hell _five_ times as many Spidermen, Daredevils, and Deadpools in their verse than there were. And, if Peter wasn’t stupid here, that would give a pretty good impression that there was a substantial Spiderman-run mob ready and willing to assert dominance on the streets.

They could take the main players down a peg or two and then knock whatever crime wave was happening in Chicago back down to a level that the local vigilantes could get control over again. Then they could all get the fuck out and go on with their lives like nothing had ever happened.

“I mean, that sounds crazy, but sure, why not?” Miles said.

Peter beamed at him.

Good kid. Gold Star.

 

 

They called for Blondie by pushing their hands into the In-Between—his happy home these days. He opened a window to them almost immediately.

“Hi,” Peter said to the guy’s mask, “Would you like to join a mob?”

There was a pause. The mask was unreadable.

Then Blondie peeled it off.

“Would I ever,” he sighed with a hand on his heart.

 

 

Big Peter was slightly harder to find, but Blondie found Itsy who could usually get the guy’s attention faster than anyone else. Itsy, however, announced that he wasn’t fucking talking to Big Peter on account of the guy replacing him with his own verse’s Miles.

Bitsy blinked in surprise at this information and looked up at Peter for how to proceed.

All Peter could think was how fucking _perfect_ if was.

“If you get ahold of B, then you can bring your Red into our verse and you and Gwen can make him up as the shittiest Murderdock ever for a night or two,” Peter negotiated to Blondie’s alarm.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Blondie said. “Matt is ruining his life with stunning efficiency all on his own right now, he doesn’t need help—”

“Deal,” Itsy Miles said.

Excellent.

 

 

Big Peter, true to form, answered Itsy Miles back even though he’d ignored Peter, Blondie, and Bitsy.

“Would you like to join our mob?” Peter asked his unimpressed tallness, semi-sprawled over the lap of what appeared to Peter to be an alternate universe Wade.

Ahem.

Awkward.

He’d forgotten about the conversation which had explained this from a while back. He regretted forgetting now; some warning would have been nice to combat the twisting uncomfortable feeling in his belly at the thought of doing anything of such nature with his own Wade.

“I thought someone was dying,” Big Peter said.

“They might be,” Peter said, pushing past the weirdness and going for earnest. “Are you in or are you out?”

Big Peter crushed the wrist of a sneaky black-gloved hand trying to reach around him for a grope.

“What do your benefits look like?” he asked.

“No coverage for anything whatsoever, but an amazing opportunity for some team bonding,” Peter offered.

A pause.

“Do we need bonding?” Big Peter asked his Wade who had sacrificed his other hand in the name of feeling up Big Peter’s abs, which, damn. Someone had gotten back into shape, hadn’t they?

Fuck off, old man, you can’t have it all.

“Yes,” Deadpool said with complete seriousness.

Big Peter leveled an eyebrow at him and then turned the same eyebrow onto the crew hanging around on the other side of his(?) bedroom.

“Can I bring the new kid?” he asked.

“I would _love_ it if you brought the new kid,” Peter said. “ _Please_ bring the new kid.”

Itsy huffed. Big Peter considered the amendment to the offer, tipping his head from side to side.

“Also, by chance, do you happen to have a Red?” Peter asked.

Big Peter perked right up.

“No,” the alternate Deadpool said immediately. “Absolutely not.”

 

 

Alright, Team Reds a la Blondie and Big Peter acquired.

Next was Gwen, then Benj, Funsize, the Feral Funsize, and the Uncomfortable Peter and whoever else Blondie could drum up who wore a suit and ran around like a moron.

“You gotta bring them through in teams,” Peter told Blondie. “We’ve all got to look like we’re part of the same organization.”

Blondie got it. It was another good thing about having other versions of yourself.

 

 

They got home and Miles made Peter promise not to tell MJ that he’d had any part in supporting this plan before he scampered off and Peter went east back home to Queens.

Okay, so maybe he’d left the house after all, but that was mere details.

In a few hours here, he’d be a mob boss. Coordinator. Mob Coordinator.

Whatever.

Semantics.

 

 

Matt had taught Sam many things in the time that they’d known each other, but they hadn’t quite covered bargaining and Samuel, precious child that he was, was horrible at it.

He got a little squirrely around step three, which was grinding people’s noses, teeth, shoulder joints, etc. until submission was achieved.

He didn’t really love the screams either.

Matt felt strong feelings towards Sam which could usually be traced back to indigestion or irritation, but there were a couple of other ones in there which circled around gooey shit like pride, fondness, and protectiveness.

He didn’t want Sam to have to learn to read screams, but it was kind of an important skill to have. You gotta know when someone’s close to the edge or faking it.

Sam covered his ears while Matt showed him how it was done the first two or three times. Then Matt had him do it.

It didn’t go well. Mostly because Samuel started panicking when the pleading started up and jerked his face towards Matt with all kinds of anxious energy, pleading with his body to be told what to do next.

Nah.

That’s not how this works, kiddo. You know that.

He didn’t move. He let Sam cycle through confusion, frustration, and aggravation until he fully absorbed the fact that Matt wasn’t going to help him and so had to buckle down to do the work himself.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds. He was getting better at this kind of thing.

It took two marks before Sam really got the hang of wringing promises out of some of Matt’s old informants.

They finished the night with six people promising that they’d reach out to their contacts in Chicago to figure out the main vertices of interactions going on there between all these organizations. Matt suspected that one of them was drugs, but there would be layers to these interactions, there always were.

Drugs were often used in conjunction with nonconsensual sex work. Or weapons. Or power plays between dirty politicians.

Really, he and Sam just needed to figure out what the priorities were for these competing gangs and then smash a fist right through the main points of operation there to shake shit up a bit. That would disperse some of the players for the time being.

And that was as far as Matt was willing to go at this point.

For real.

They could relay the info to Barton and let him deal with it. Matt had New York and San Francisco. That was plenty for an old guy like him at this point. Chicago was someone else’s problem.

“How’s the battle scar?” he asked Sam on the way home. He didn’t smell too irony. More bitter—iodine bitter, antiseptic bitter. That was a good sign.

“Sucks,” Sam pouted.

“Noted. Meds when we get back to Karen’s.”

“How about a hug?” Sam asked flatly.

This kid.

“Hugs must be earned, Samuel,” he huffed.

“Fine, no hugs for you,” Sam sniffed. “You didn’t do shit.”

Matt laughed.

 

 

 

 **SM:** good morning everyone

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : take it back

 **DD:** yes good morning. Sam, would you like to report the night’s activities?

 **BT:** no

 **S2:** lol

 **DD:** bad attitude

 **BT:** don’t care

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : the cheek! Whatever shall you do now, Redthew?

 **S4:** we’re making a mob

 **S2:** sorry what

 **S3:** is that what we’re calling ourselves now?

 **S4:** a spidey mob

 **SM:** team red mob. We asked some of the alters to help out. It’s gonna be great, y’all just wait. They’re gonna tag into the Chicago situation so make it look like we’ve got a whole expanded team with cross-country coverage. Gonna confuse the fuck out of everyone for a minute, but each team will have a legit Spidey, so they’ll def be believable. They’ll cause a little chaos, knock everyone down a few pegs, and bring things to a level that the existing folks can take over again.

 **BT:** you WHAT

 **BT:** BOSS

 **BT:** BOSSSSSS

 **S2:** ??

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : you okay kiddo?

 **BT:** I NEARLY BROKE A GUY’S FINGERS LAST NIGHT

 **BT:** I DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO

 **D2:** wow good morning everyone

 **SM:** DD what the fuck

 **DD:** Peter you can’t just send people into the city willy nilly, that’s not how mobs work. They’re called organizations for a reason.

 **S4:** oh my god why would you do that Sam???

 **BT:** DD said to??

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : if Red told you to jump off a cliff, would you?

 **BT:** fucking

 **BT:** DUH

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : red what does it feel like to be the most powerful man in the world

 **DD: [voice message]** like I’ve got a migraine coming on.

 **DD: [voice message]** The fingers were casualties. My contacts are checking in for weak points. Peter, don’t let the others take the plunge until we know where the pressure points are.

 **S2:** oh shit, look at DD coming in with a plan

 **SM:** hey matt?

 **SM:** I love you. And copy that. Will tell the others to hold off for now. Also, Wade, don’t be mad but there’s gonna be another Wade popping up.

 **DD:** wait there’s going to be more wades?

 **SM:** just one so far. That I’m aware of anyways. Unless Blondie’s got some others up his sleeve

 **S2:** is this wade friendly?

 **S4:** remember Big Peter?

 **S2:** yah

 **S4:** so Big Peter’s poly like Spidey

 **S2:** I hate where this is going

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I HATE IT TOO MAKE IT STOP PLEASE

 **S4:** so Big Peter’s Wade is like his boyfriend kinda

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : PETER I WILL DO ANYTHING. SEND HIM BACK

 **SM:** he’s not even here man, chill. He’s fine

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : YOU ARE A CHILD

 **SM:** I’m 26

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I’VE KNOWN YOU SINCE YOU WERE A BABY

 **SM:** 15 but okay

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : I’M SAFEWORDING OUT

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : PINEAPPLE

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : PINEAPPLE

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : PINEAPPLE

 **DD:** For the record I too am highly uncomfortable with this situation

 **S4:** oh, then you’re not gonna want to hear about Itsy’s wade

 **S3:** Itsy has a wade now???

 **S4:** yeah

 **SM:** wait, are you serious? blondie said nothing???

 **S4:** blondie hates him

 **SM:** what

 **S4:** you’ll see

 

 

Matt’s contacts got back to him around the time when Peter was suffocating under the weight of MJ’s glare in Macy’s, trying desperately to explain why the fuck he could not possibly wear an orange suit.

“I am going to look like a Cheez-It, Michelle. A walking, talking Cheez-It,” he argued.

“You need to match Ned,” she maintained.

“I am not food,” Peter pleaded. “Ned, tell her I’m not food.”

Ned shrugged. He looked just fine in orange.

“NED.”

His phone rang, thank fuck.

“Hello?”

Matt sounded a little out of breath, but then again, he’d been scampering to and fro over the last 48 hours, trying very hard to keep everyone preoccupied and well away from his husband until the big day.

Foggy didn’t _want_ a big white wedding. And it had become very clear to everyone else exactly why.

Foggy’s folks were very enthusiastic.

Foggy was contemplating matricide, patricide, fratricide and all the other ‘cides’ in between.

His mom was still worried about the flower arrangements and the number of tables for guests. His sister fueled her fires. His dad was doing his best to get his most recent artistic creation into a corner of the reception venue and a crowd of cousins had apparently showed up out of nowhere expecting to help, despite the fact that there was still multiple days before the event even happened.

Foggy was _this close_ to banning all foliage from the reception and telling everyone to bring a damn blanket to sit on.

“Apparently, there is something wrong with the suits?” Matt explained. “I don’t know, I guess one of them is now way lighter than the other. Something about the cleaners. I don’t care?? Peter, I don’t care??”

No, of course he wouldn’t, but everyone around him was caring and probably freaking him out.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Peter said. “You got anything on our folks up north?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, “Drug—” he dropped his voice suddenly, so evidently Foggy’s little cousins or nieces and nephews were running around too, “Drugs and guns from the sounds of it. We got four main pick up and delivery points. I’ll send you their addresses in a minute here.”

“You’re amazing, Double D,” Peter said.

“Don’t I know it, kid.”

“Do you guys need any help?”

Matt hummed on the other side of the line in thought.

“Yeah, actually. Can you do me a solid and let Sam stay at yours tonight? He’s been trying to sleep all day with folks coming in and out of the house. I’ve been trying to get him to stop sleeping with the damn dogs, they’re all teaching each other bad habits.”

Peter suspected that this was Matt’s way of showing Sam affection.

“Yeah, of course. We’re in orange hell right now, so I can swing by afterwards and take him to mine.”

“Thanks, Pete. And orange?”

“MJ wants us to wear orange.”

“Oh,” Matt said carefully, “That’s festive.”

“I can’t, Matt.”

“Okay, hold on—Fogs!” It sounded like Matt had lowered the phone. “Foggy, dearest. My beloved, come here.”

Foggy’s grumbling seemed to be circling more around angry woods hermit than Prince Charming at the minute, but he indulged Matt.

“Peter’s gonna let Sam stay with him tonight,” Matt said, “Also, feelings on orange suits?”

“For who? For Peter?” Foggy asked.

“That’s a yes.”

“He matching Michelle?”

“It is my understanding.”

“Pete’s too pink for orange,” Foggy decided, “Tell him to do a light gray or a blue with an orange tie or kerchief.”

Hey God? Thanks for Foggy, professional suit-wearer.

He thanked the two of them, hung up and returned to the inner circle of hell.

“Foggy says I’m too pink for orange and has proposed a light blue jacket with orange pocket square,” he announced.

Michelle crossed her arms looking far too beautiful in cascading pleats of chiffon and Ned looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

“I can do a matching tie to Peter’s suit,” he offered.

Michelle hummed.

“I _guess_ ,” she said. “Whatever Foggy wants.”

Ah, perfect.

He loved it when plans started to come together.

 

 

 **Blondie:** heya Tats, we’ve got 7 Spidey teams on board including Gwen.

 **Blondie:** Well I say 7

 **Blondie** : Our good old pal Shortstack agreed and then tried to break my elbow again so I dunno just how sound that agreement is. But me, B, and Funsize can def bring our whole teams.

 **Tats:** hey! Great news thanks, we just got word from Double D that there are four main pick up and drop off points which we’re gonna want to target to break things up as quickly as possible. I’ve got suits for folks who need a variant for this verse (Angel’s happy to lend Gwen hers btw). I’m sending you schematics for the suits if folks want to wear/make their own and the coordinates now. Can you make an accessible chat for future communication so that people know what to expect when they tag in?

 **Blondie:** roger that. Just got the coordinates. I’ll ask around if people need suits—you happen to have DD suit designs too? We’ve got some variety.

 **Tats:** what

 **Blondie:** Yeah. Like my Matt’s all red, but B’s Matt wears black with red boots? Is that a your guy thing?

 **Tats:** god, don’t give him the option. He’s got a red suit and a casual black one. I’ve got one design for our DD copycat, otherwise maybe just ask if they can all go for show-stopping red?

 **Blondie:** they’re blind, man

 **Tats:** They’ll figure it out, they always do. Do we have DP variants too?

 **Blondie:** uuuuuuuuuuuuh yeah. But only one. I’m on it.

 **Tats:** yours?

 **Blondie:** he’s not mine. He’s miles’s. don’t fucking talk to me about it I’m fragile

 

 

 


	11. get married already

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No,” Peter said. “They’re gifts.”  
> “Bribes,” Sam corrected.  
> “Bitch,” Peter hissed.  
> “Bribes,” Matt repeated over both of them. Guilty eyes never worked on Matt. He couldn’t see them and therefore did not give a shit.  
> “For my mob,” Peter said. His whole body winced slowly as Matt’s hands approached his hips.  
> “For your mob,” Matt repeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone I hate this chapter, but I've rewritten it 5! whole! times!! And need to post it and move on with my life. So apologies in advance everyone, this is the working out logistics and moving the plot forward chapter. I've just got too many elements going on atm and need to start resolving some shit!!

The AcaDec kids were freaking out that afternoon. 

MJ had done everything in her power to settle them down, to the point where Peter was surprised and a little taken aback by it.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t aware that MJ could make herself someone less brusque and direct, it was more that he rarely saw her perform emotional labor for people she wasn’t personally invested in. She’d only known these kids for coming on two weeks, but here she was, holding hands with Ernie and Kailee and making eye contact with each and every child around her. Telling them all to breathe.

“We’re going to be just fine,” MJ said carefully and slowly to all those anxious eyes and sweaty palms. “We are all champion Hot Potato and Cluedo players now. We are all intelligent and capable and compassionate human beings who have learned a lot about the world and how to trust each other these last couple of weeks. Nationals is nothing in the face of that.”

Damn girl.

Keep talkin’ like that and one of Peter’s knees might get a little weak.

Miles’s Spidey Sense must have caught wind of something stupid a-brewing in Peter’s brain next to him because he turned ever-so-slightly and lovingly punched Peter right in the kidney.

Joke was on him, though, that just made Peter’s eyes water more.

 

 

Blondie, having elected himself as Peter’s third in command after Miles in their mob endeavor, seemed to be having a field day setting things into place for their upcoming raid on Chicago. He kept sending Peter mysterious emojis without context which Itsy would then translate for them all in the chat.

Itsy, bless this boy, seemed to be able to read his Spidey like a book. And while on one hand that was great, on the other hand it was terrifying.

It made Peter give Miles a good hard once-over every now and then.

Just in case.

Just in case.

 

 

Blondie had gone and hunted down a Spidey who lived in Chicago in his verse. After verifying that this Spidey was totally okay despite this fact, he’d gone on to figure out if he could tag into Peter’s verse’s Chicago from that Chicago.

He could.

Or so Itsy said.

Blondie’s triumph in text form looked like a collection of frog emojis basking in the sun.

Blondie then moved onto trying to figure out where in Peter’s Chicago the delivery points were. They had 4 addresses, but that wasn’t quite good enough, apparently, because two of the delivery points floated between a couple of places.

Peter gritted his teeth and tried to think of a way to find floating points.

He thought about asking Wade. Wade’s whole assassin community existed on a floating underground. He might know more about the logic behind the moves. Just as he opened a message to Wade, however, Big Peter came to the rescue with a snapshot of a pyramid of non-matching whiteboards.

He’d written out what was probably supposed to be a single flowchart, but it had spilled over the edge of the center frame, and rather than write smaller, it seemed that he’d gone out and borrowed the whiteboards of everyone in his office building to finish it. It was detailed almost to a fault, and the squirrel emoji Blondie submitted to the chat succinctly conveyed everyone’s confusion at its many tendrils.

Peter wasn’t quite sure what to make of it himself and so, around 7 that night, he copied the photo and sent it to Wade.

Wade responded with a single thumbs up which was not helpful.

 

 **PP:** can I pls have a breakdown?

 **WW:** yes

 **PP:** from you?

 **WW:** oh shit

 **WW:** yeah sure what part’s hard?

 

What part’s hard?

All of it, man.

It was written in code.

 

 **PP:** why is there a lemon

 **WW:** ah yeah if you spin it it’ll give you a cardinal direction

 

O….kay.

Plan B.

**Tats:**  hi everyone. question: are there any Matts/Reds available right now for a quick situation reassessment? Mine’s in wedding-panic mode and not talking to anyone.

 **B. Parker:** you don’t like my chart???

 **Itsy:** it’s a very nice chart

 **Tats:** it’s a great chart

 **Blondie:** give me 5 to ask

 **PParker:** what is a ‘red?’

 **B. Parker:** a Daredevil

 **PParker:** ahhhh, I see.

 **PParker:** so y’all are like friends with your DDs?

 **B. Parker:** Blondie did you explain anything to this guy?

 **Shortstack:** mine’s down.

 **Funsize:** hello! Mine’s down too. He wants to know how thorough you want it to be.

 **Tats:** very

 **Shortstack:** on it

 **Funsize** : he says roger that. Blond Peter, can you tag us in?

 **Blondie:** oh wow, moving already! sure gimme a second to get to Chicago. 🚒✈🚢

 

 

There was a knock at the door that made Peter drop his phone. He opened the door with one sock on and found himself faced with Sam with a stolen pillow crammed under one arm and Tuesday on her leash at his left.

He’d really taken the train that way, hadn’t he?

“Sup, man?” Peter asked. “I take it things haven’t chilled out yet?”

Sam had knocked out on the couch the day before after he lost tolerance for what he described as ‘the orchestra of anxiety’ that had burned through Karen’s apartment in zig-zag patterns for most of the day. His mood did not appear to have improved the slightest bit since then. He made an irritable humming noise that made Tuesday sway her plume tail and send Peter sad eyes in concern.

“High energy, huh?” he tried.

Sam glared and patted at his shoulder before taking himself and the dog over to the couch to curl up in a ball.

“Right, well. If you need anything, just knock shit over until you find it,” Peter said, closing the door.

Sam waved dismissively over his shoulder and snuggled down onto his pillow. Tuesday nudged at his arms and snuffled in his ear and, at his hiss of disgust, decided that her job was done here.

Bedtime now.

She settled down next to him on the floor and politely set her head on her paws. One huff later and they were both down for the night.

That seemed to Peter to be his own cue to shut the fuck up and try to get some sleep. He turned off the light in the living room and closed the door to his bedroom behind him.

 

 

He woke up abruptly with his heart buzzing in his ears for several beats before he realized that it wasn’t his heart making that noise. It was his phone on the bedside table. He grabbed it and flinched at the light. It was 3am. And the chat was freaking out again.

 

 **Blondie:** COME GET HIM HE’S FIGHTING THE OTHERS

 **GwenStacy:** I’m sorry!! I’m on my way, Idk how he even knew about it???

 **Blondie:** I thought it was you reaching out to me gwen!! You!! Is your window unlocked?? It was def your hand I grabbed!!

 **GwenStacy:** I’m so sorry!! I don’t know how he knows where I live. my dad is PISSED

 **Blondie:** I don’t fucking care honey, I can’t handle 3 of them and especially not when one of them’s your guy

 **GwenStacy** : UGH okay I’m up I’ll be right there

 **Read:** 12:37am

 

 **Blondie:** GWEN WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU

 **GwenStacy:** Dude chill, my Dad’s paranoid, I’ve been trying to leave for an hour

 **Blondie:** I need another Spidey—a big guy, B? Are you up? Peni, can you hit up Benj? New guy???

 **Shortstack:** can I help?

 **Funsize:** I’m here too what can we do?

 **Blondie:** no I need a big fucker

 **Tats:** what’s going on?? Where are you? I can be there.

 **PParker:** I got this, let me get some pants on big guy

 **B. Parker:** what’s happening?

 **Blondie:** oh you know.

 **Blondie:** Parker luck

 **B. Parker:** goddamnit, where’d things go to shit this time?

 **Shortstack:** is my Matt okay?

 **Blondie:** he is fine and lovely and Funsize your guy too, they’re doing some adorable team work shit to track down SOMEONE’S rogue supervillain

 **GwenStacy:** I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry he must have tapped my phone again

 **Tats:** I’m heading your way, Blondie, ETA 30sec

“Peter?”

He froze with one arm crammed in the suit. He must have woken up Sam when he’d tumbled out of bed.

“You okay?”

The last thing the multiverse needed right now was a Sam in it.

“I’m good,” he called through the wall, scrambling to get the other arm in the sleeve.

“You sound like you’re lying,” Sam called back.

Damn, Matt. Stop teaching him this shit.

The phone vibrated off the bed next to him onto the ground. He snatched it up when the sleeve was on.

 

 **Blondie:** no no tats, B don’t come!! I got Agave here with me now

 **B. Parker:** are you sure? I am one-shoe into this commitment

 **B. Parker:** also—Agave??

 **Blondie:** new guy. His hair looks like a pineapple but that’s rude. anyways, he’s great. we’re good we’re chill we got this thank you!!

 

A…pineapple?

 

 **Tats:** I am in my suit, man are you for real for sure??

 **Blondie:** 👍👍👍👍

 

Peter collapsed back down onto the bed, staring at the phone in his hands.

He felt kind of stupid now, all suited up and nowhere to go. His heart rabbited against in his neck, flight or flight instinct activated.

He pressed his forehead against the top of the phone and groaned.

This mob shit was bad for his blood pressure.

He didn’t bother peeling off the suit. Just threw himself back into bed and laid on his stomach, cursing the heat weakly until he fell back asleep.

 

 

He woke up to his phone again making a real cacophony of sounds. Vibrating and beeping and chirping.

Fun.

He cracked his eyes open and picked it up to see that the fuck nightmare had happened last night while he was sleeping. It appeared exactly as it sounded except it ended with Blondie saying, “Well that’s one way to do it!”

Which was not comforting in the least bit.

 

 **Tats:** I am arisen. Can I get a report on what happened last night?

 **Itsy:** hi Tats!! You missed so much!!

 

Oh, excellent.

 

 **Tats:** go on then.

 **Itsy:** we met Agave!!

 **Tats:** Do we like Agave?

 **PParker:** I. AM. NOT. A. FRUIT.

 **Itsy:** he cried all over Gwen! For like! An hour!

 **PParker:** who do you fucking belong to? Where is your Peter??

 **GwenStacy:** not crying on me

 **PParker:** this is homophobic. I’ll have you know that I have been thoroughly traumatized in the last couple of years here. Y’all can get bent

 **Itsy:** oh and btw, Tats, Murderdock went in and established our mob for us. He’s recruited 50 people in 3 hrs

 

WHAT.

 

 **Tats:** WHAT

 **GwenStacy:** on the upside, he’s chased everyone else to the north of the city and everyone now thinks that all the DDs and Spideys who showed up to catch him work for him and I’m p sure the whole city is paralyzed so like

 **GwenStacy:** in a way, he’s done our job for us

 **Tats:** did he kill anyone????

 **GwenStacy:** no, but he’s got a collection of fingers that he’s guarding and not letting Blondie near

 

Jesus fucking Christ.

 

 **Tats:** did the other Matts not stop him??

 **Blondie:** yeah see that’s what we thought would happen

 **PParker:** but it turns out that both auxiliary DDs had like, aspirations to join the mob at some point in their youths which they have now decided to seize the chance to do. So really, we were looking at a triple threat in the DD department for a hot minute there.

 

No.

No, no, no.

Matt. Why didn’t you say something?

 

 **Tats:** so dare I ask where that leaves us now?

 **Blondie:** well surprisingly in a pretty good position.

 **Blondie:** Murderdock’s managed to get his hands about 200lbs of the cocaine which I’m not sure he knows what he’s going to do with.

 **GwenStacy:** He’s trying to figure out how to get it all back into our verse so that he can add it to his hoard, but Shortstack’s Red went and hid some of it somewhere when no one was looking and I guess he forgot where

 **GwenStacy:** his defense is that he’s never been to Chicago

 **B. Parker:** This shit is wild. So, just so we’re clear: are you all saying that we have successfully gotten control of all 4 delivery points?

 **Blondie:** yes.

 **B. Parker:** and we are also saying that fear has been struck in the hearts of some of the main players on the Chicago mob scene?

 **GwenStacy:** According to Murderdock’s finger box, exactly 5 main players have had fear struck into their hearts, yes.

 **B. Parker:** well shit. Okay, that was easy enough. I guess all we’ve got to do now is keep up the image for a week or so to really settle things down, eh?

 

Well, when you phrased it like that—it did certainly streamline things.

 

 **Tats:** does this mean that we need to thank Murderdock???

 **GwenStacy:** uh so thanks for him would be helping him move all these drugs into his living room or smth and I don’t know where you fall on that scale of aiding and abetting. So?

 **Tats:** I was thinking a nice bottle of wine

 **GwenStacy:** he doesn’t drink wine

 **Tats:** I was thinking a nice bottle of scotch

 **Blondie:** all three of them literally perked up just now when Gwen said ‘scotch,’ I think we’ve found our way of luring them all back home.

 

Beautiful. That was easy enough.

 

 **Tats:** alright, tell them I’ve got a bottle of the good stuff for each of them, provided they hand the situation over peacefully. I suppose that we can start just doing the usual rounds in the city now. Do we want to assign each team a time slot?

 **B. Parker:** sounds good to me. If we run two teams a day, people will think there’s a lot of us.

 **Blondie:** that’s probably doable, but I need a minute to make a timetable since everyone’s verses are all in different timezones. After that, maybe we draw straws??

 **Tats:** I love it. thanks guys.

 **Blondie:** np!

 **GwenStacy:** 👍👍❤❤❤

 **PParker:** anytime

 

 

Peter opened the door to the bedroom to find Sam standing there with his arms crossed and Tuesday sat next to him expectantly.

“You’re doing mob things,” Sam accused.

“Who, me?” Peter said.

Sam wasn’t wearing his prosthetic lenses. His inverse eyes were threatening.

“Just a little,” Peter admitted. “But more importantly, do you have a second?”

 

 

“Please say you aren’t going to drink all this,” Sam said as the cashier scanned the six bottle of scotch.

“I’m not,” Peter said.

Sam stared at him. His prosthetic lenses made him look less angry and more disappointed.

“I’m _not_ ,” Peter emphasized. “They’re bribes.”

Sam said nothing. He watched the cashier scan the final bottle.

 

 

Matt came to grab Sam on his way to pick up the gluten free and dairy free cakes for the reception the next day. Sam and his needle fingers had poked out of Peter just what had gone down that night and swearing him to silence for the next two days out of respect of Foggy if no one else in the wedding party had little effect on the disappointment Sam and Tuesday directed at him.

He’d created a wall of scotch on the counter to escape their dual gazes.

He realized once Matt was standing in the kitchen that he’d miscalculated this venture.

“You having a party, kid?” Matt asked as Sam ducked under his arm and stared at Peter disappointedly from under it.

That wasn’t fair.

Peter mugged at him.

Matt cleared his throat.

“No,” Peter said. “They’re gifts.”

“Bribes,” Sam corrected.

“Bitch,” Peter hissed.

“Bribes,” Matt repeated over both of them.

Guilty eyes never worked on Matt. He couldn’t see them and therefore did not give a shit.

“For my mob,” Peter said. His whole body winced slowly as Matt’s hands approached his hips.

“For your mob,” Matt repeated.

God, no. Come on.

“They’re doing good work,” Peter said.

If Matt found out he was the odd man out here and that three other Matts had gotten go out and smash half a city’s worth of mobsters without him, he was going to have feelings. Peter wasn’t sure if they were going to be positive or negative or if they would involve Matt standing over him and calling him a fucking idiot, but he really didn’t want to find out.

“So you’re paying them in scotch,” Matt said.

“Yes.”

“Any particular reason?”

“No,” Peter lied.

Matt’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.

“I see,” he said.

The tension hung.

“Well, thank you for letting Sam stay another night,” Matt said.

Sam shook his head sadly at Peter’s life decisions.

“Anytime,” Peter said. “See you tomorrow?”

Matt nodded slowly.

Oh, he definitely knew what was up.

 

 

 **Tats:** oh hey Blondie, do we happen to have a timetable semi-done? Maybe straws to pull soonish? My Red knows telepathically that other Reds are getting to do things that he is not and hiding things from him is SUPER hard.

 **Tats:** did I mention tomorrow is his wedding day?

 **Tats:** I’m thinking that he’d love nothing more than to crush a mob as a wedding gift, any other thoughts???

 **Tats:** also I have an unholy amount of scotch in my kitchen, come get however many bottles you need.

 **Blondie:** timetable is almost done. I’ll put the straws out to the group in just a second here. Maybe you can let your Red pick a number for your team as a pre-wedding present??

 **Tats:** I love you.

 **Tats:** this kind of means that I need to add everyone to the chat rn tho, so it’s going to get insane

 **Blondie:** totally fine, just label everyone really clearly. It only makes sense to get everyone connected to it now, anyways.

 **Tats:** thank you I love you you’re my favorite spiderman

He had to go grab his blue suit from May’s so that he’d have it in the morning. He had to go check on Wade to make sure he hadn’t suffocated in the heat in the last 12 hours. He had to check in on MJ and Ned, and ask Karen or Kirsten or someone who was emphatically not Foggy if there was anything that he could do to help prepare the church for the ceremony.

He needed to polish his damn shoes.

Aigh.

Shoes. Polish thyselves.

 

 

He was halfway to Wade’s when Blondie opened the floodgates to hell.

 

 **Blondie** : goooooooood Morning Cambodia everyone.

 **Blondie:** we are all gathered here today to do some very strategic and respectful ass kicking. So everyone please pick a number between 1 and 10.

 **B. Parker:** It’s Vietnam

 **Blondie:** that’s not a number slugger

 

Peter choked on the train and started coughing and thumping at his chest. An eight-year-old gave him stank eye. He almost flipped him the finger right back.

Almost.  

 

 **Blondie:** also! Just a quick note, since we are in the presence of a soon-to-be married man, we’re gonna go ahead and let him take first pick. Tats, you wanna add your team in?

 

No, Peter did not. But alas. He’s started this disaster, so now he had to see it through. He braced an arm around one of the hand rails on the train.

 

 **[Tats** has added **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** , **Daredevil, Dave, LittleSpidey, Louis,** and **Bitsy** to the chat]

 **PParker:** holy mother of god

 **PParker:** when Blondie said you had a team, I thought we were talking like, 3 people at the most??

 **LittleSpidey:** HEY YOU FINALLY DID IT YA BASTARD

 **Bitsy:** oh so we’re entering the big pond now, nothing could possibly go wrong with this.

 **Tats:** Silence children. Everyone scroll up. Matt, you are the groom in question—please choose a number?

 **Daredevil:** I am suspicious

 **Blondie:** congratulations, Big Red! Marriage is strange and exciting! I hope you have a great one!

 **Daredevil:** I’ve been married for ten years son

 **Blondie:** Right. Ignore me, then. please pick a number. We’re determining an order to go and do mob-related things in, like fighting crime.

 **Daredevil** : **[voice message]** this is hands down the shittiest cult I’ve ever joined.

 **Funsize:** oh my god!! You don’t sound anything like my Red at all!!

 **Daredevil:** ?

 **Tats:** Matt pick a number.

 **Daredevil:** fine, 2.

 **LittleSpidey:** you fool. You absolute fool.

 **LittleSpidey:** this prime number is going to doom us all.

 **Tats:** We LOVE 2. Thanks everyone, I’m throwing you out now

 **Blondie:** excellent, great work. Congratulations, revered Murdock. Now, everyone else, please pick a number! Peni, can you please ask Benj to pick one?

 **PeniParker:** 👍

 **B. Parker** : wait are we all adding our teams to this shit? Because I can’t, I got a reputation to keep up with my Miles

 **Blondie:** no you don’t have to, yet. We’ll have to add everyone eventually though.

 **Itsy:** sounds exciting

 **GwenStacy:** sounds like a nightmare

 **Blondie:** Listen

 **Blondie:** guys

 **Blondie:** darlings

 **Blondie:** I need you

 **Blondie:** to PICK A FUCKING NUMBER ALREADY.

 

Alright, Blondie was going to have an aneurysm at this point. Peter was going to leave them to it. He stuffed his phone into his pocket and set his eyes on the door in front of him.

 

 

He got up the next morning and, after he got out of the shower, stood in front of the mirror and took a deep breath.

The guy who stared back at him looked pretty good, given the circumstances. Peter gave him a smile and then a wink and then filled the sink with water.

 

 

He picked up May from a couple blocks away and they took the train to collect MJ and Ned and, with MJ drowning in chiffon and Ned swept up neatly in light orange, they all parked themselves in a corner of a new train and studiously did not look at the old man jeering at them from the other side of the carriage.

They arrived to Clinton church about an hour before wedding things were meant to happen and were immediately besieged by a bevy of orphanage kids, all of whom had designated themselves pre-wedding flower children. They chased each other around the courtyard, hurling petals as they went.

Peter snatched a flower out of a rogue basket and scooped up another as it was swept off a table. He presented these to the ladies in their posse who affixed them indulgently in their hair.

Ned called him a teacher’s pet. Peter made sure to lay a big, sloppy kiss on his cheek so he didn’t feel left out.

They attempted to find a Nelson to ask where Matt and Foggy were but that turned out to be surprisingly difficult. The Nelsons were not as blonde and blue-eyed as Foggy. In fact, most of them weren’t either of those things which was a little puzzling. Eventually, however they located Foggy’s sister in a shady corner of the yard, fanning herself and her pits frantically. She shrugged when they asked where her beloved sibling was.

“Mom’s probably crying all over him in the foyer,” she said.

Right. To the foyer!

 

There were no Foggies in the foyer although there was a dozing while standing up Sam with two beautifully groomed pups in his grip.

Sam snapped awake at May’s gasp and startled a bit when she came over to kneel in front of the dogs and say, “Well, it is lovely to make your acquaintance, you beautiful strangers!”

The dogs both started wagging.

Peter couldn’t help but smile at the fact that Matt had swapped out their purple and blue collars for matching pink ones for the occasion. Peter wondered if that was a Matt-decision or a mother-in-law decision.

It was probably a Foggy’s nieces-and-nephews decision, actually.

Any way around, it was very sweet. He was sure that they felt included in the festivities.

Peter introduced May to Sam and Sam smiled, then called behind him for a slight young woman in a black, lace dress who came over to him with sharp interest.

Sam introduced her as his sister, Hannah. Hannah reintroduced him as the local dog walker. Sam amended his statement and reintroduced her as the local raccoon impersonator and she stomped on his foot and told him that that had been a _phase_.

Peter was almost taken aback. Logically, he knew that Sam had had a sister, but he hadn’t expected them to be so…sibling-y for some reason. Maybe because it was hard to imagine someone who stood by while their very human, very not-enhanced brother went around the neighborhood, getting shot at and punched in the ribs at night. She had to have tried to stop him. If they were this close, there must have been a tipping point, right?

Hannah noticed his glazed over face and asked him very politely how he knew the grooms.

He shook himself and blinked back to earth.

“Matt’s like a brother to me,” he said. “I’ve known him since I was a kid.”

Hannah hummed and looked to the other two for explanations as well.

 

 

About twenty minutes before the ceremony was due to start, Peter and the others managed to find Foggy.

He looked really handsome. And absolutely blank. The way he looked in court when he was listening to someone tear apart his argument piece by piece and he just had to stand there and take it until it was his turn to deal out some damage.

His blankness was, however, offset by the neat sweep of his hair off to one side and the artful little silver clip someone had used to pull the rest of it out of his face.

It took a second for him to notice them since he was surrounded by his family who were all in various states of tears, but when he did, his blankness softened a bit and he held out arms for a hug from each of them.

He smelled very strongly of jasmine.

“Does everything look okay?” he asked gently.

“It’s beautiful, Foggy,” MJ said.

It really was. The stained glass in the main hall sent rainbows down onto the polished hardwood and  the colors bled through the sheer petals of the flowers artfully arranged around little boughs settled around the church’s main lobby.

Foggy smiled a little and his eyes crinkled.

“I’m glad,” he said. “The kids told me Sister Maggie was arranging things all night.”

Aw.

Awwwwww.

Peter’s heart felt so full.

“I take it the Murdocks are hiding,” May said lightly.

Foggy’s face fell ever so slightly.

“They’re praying to Matt’s dad,” he said.

Peter’s heart felt even _fuller_. His eyes did a little too, now that he thought about it.

“We’re so happy for you guys,” MJ said. “You know, marriage aside. It’s amazing that you two are both here. We’re so grateful you’re both still here.”

Foggy’s smile did something a little uncomfortable before he nodded in understanding.

“Through sickness and in health,” he said a little self-depreciatingly.

Oh god, everyone shut the fuck up, Peter was going to cry.

The clattering of puppy feet headed their way from down the hall saved him—thank God, and Foggy’s soft smile perked up into something a lot more familiar.

“Oh wow,” he said as the beloved pooches shuffled in for adoration. “You picked up the wrong dogs, Sam.” To the rest of them, he said, “You guys should go grab a seat. Hopefully, we’ll be starting on time.”

Yeah, no definitely—

The clatter of a crowd of feet drew everyone’s attentions back towards a corridor behind them.

Matt scrambled out into the hall in a flurry wearing a grey suit which was just a hint darker than Foggy’s. He had precisely two thousand orphanage kids on his heels.

“I fucked up,” he announced, clear as a bell across the hall.

The kids all cheered at his profanity.

He swore at them again, told them to get fucked and abandoned them all to duck down a flight of stairs into the belly of the church. Naturally, the kids flocked after him, cheering and jeering and tossing flower petals as they went.

Sister Maggie popped up just as harried as Matt somewhere among the hoard and, upon noticing Foggy, made several, ‘everything is just fine’ gestures before chastising the kids and chasing her son down the stairs.

Foggy sniffed when the last kid had vanished from the corridor.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” he said, suddenly in a much better mood. When he turned to shoo them away towards seating this time, his smile was a lot more genuine.

 

 

The ceremony started late.

Of course it did. And of course, Foggy was standing there at the altar, trying to hide his giggling as everyone in the church heard Matt crash into no less than three walls outside the hall before someone out there caught, hastily straightened, and shoved him and Sister Maggie out into the hall proper.

Both of them were covered in additional flora from the orphanage kids’ earlier zeal and strangely enough, sawdust too? But they snapped into proper Catholic posture as soon as their feet touched the aisle between the pews. They puffed and stiffened up and Maggie took her son’s elbow lightly and guided him down the aisle like the two of them hadn’t been screaming through the church just a second ago to fix whatever it was that Matt destroyed two minutes before his own wedding.

It was very, _very_ hard to keep a straight face.

Foggy was practically crying up there when Matt, all suaveness forgotten, nearly tripped and took out his mama getting up onto the little raised platform at the front of the room.

Sister Maggie was visibly mortified, as was Matt, to be fair. But again, they both swallowed it down and crammed it into the ‘repress’ folder in their heads.

They’d process it later and probably never acknowledge or speak of it again.

Peter liked to imagine that Matt’s dad was there with them all in spirit form, holding his head in the first pew and asking God why his wife and child were so fucking _awkward_.

Fogs was charmed though. Foggy’s mood had skyrocketed in the last ten seconds. He beamed at Matt while the priest behind them solemnly spoke on the sanctity of marriage and picked a particularly large piece of sawdust out of Matt’s hair.

When it came times to say vows, all Matt’s composure, which had been shuddering every couple of seconds, went right out the fucking window and he unveiled the meaning behind the sawdust and his missing pocket square when he produced said square from a pocket, all crumpled up and strangely damp-looking.

“I know I promised you a stress-free wedding,” he said apologetically, “And I am aware that I have delivered that on no front whatsoever, so while I’m at it, I guess you should know that I dropped the ring down a drain just now.”

MATT.

Peter took it all back. The spirit of Matt’s dad in the first row of pews was doing nothing but tearing his hair and screeching, “YOU HAD ONE JOB, MATTHEW.”

Matt shrugged sheepishly.

“We found it,” he said. “And the sister drowned it in antiseptic, so it’s probably safe to wear and—”

“I love you so much,” Foggy said over him. “In sickness and in health and through all and every kind of your idiocy, Matt Murdock. I vow to love you through all that and then some for as long as we’re both tromping around this planet.”

Matt’s surprised silence lasted just long enough for him to catch himself and then stammer, “Oh—well I—I—you’re pretty great yourself, pal.”

Sister Maggie put her head on the pew in front of her. Foggy’s mom clutched a hand to her chest and dabbed at her eyes.

Foggy laughed.

“Those your vows?” he asked.

Matt jolted like he’d been shocked.

“We’re doing vows!” he said like a fuckhead who hadn’t been listening to anything that was happening around him period. “Right. Vows, I have—hold this—wait! No, that’s mine, don’t hold that—”

He stuffed the pocket square back into his pocket to pull out what were presumably his vows stamped out on a piece of paper, except he fumbled the important part of that motion, dropped the ring again, snatched it out of thin air just in time and realized abruptly that he’d done that in front of literally God and everyone.

Kirsten put her head down next to Sister Maggie’s. Sam was visibly trying to send Matt good vibes while steepling the tips of his fingers over the lower half of his face the front row.

“You got this Red,” Wade encouraged over everyone’s heads from the back where he was standing with the rest of the overflow.

Matt was dying. But the praise helped him push past it.

He abandoned the paper, stood up, cleared his throat and took Foggy’s hand.  

“You know my vows,” he said. “I tell you them every day I come home and every time we open the office door and I’ve been telling you them for—” he paused to swallow—“Eighteen years, Foggy. You know I’d do anything to make you feel loved and wanted and safe. There is no greater source of happiness in my life than simply being in your presence. So I vow, to the best of my power, to kindle and fuel your happiness and warmth for as long as you’ll have me.”

The priest nodded gravely. And the ceremony went on. This time with Matt beaming at Fogs like he was the moon itself. Foggy carried on picking shit out of his hair and brushing it off his shoulders the whole time, until they exchanged rings and bumped noses on the way to a kiss to seal the deal.

Peter glanced over and saw that Sister Maggie had lifted her head again and accepted one of the tissues that Karen and Kirsten were sharing over her head. Kirsten was making an adorable motion which involved tipping her head back and fanning her eyes so that she didn’t ruin her mascara.

 

 

As soon as the ceremony was pronounced over, Foggy told everyone to get over themselves and get out of the hall.

The reception started at 4 and he didn’t want to see a single person milling around the venue until then.

Now scram.

 

 

Peter crashed into the rest of the team red crew outside the church.

“Nice ceremony,” MJ remarked.

 Angel, Louis, and Miles had apparently gone the pastel-suit route and were all popping collars and ties open a little desperately. Wade appeared to have accepted his new lot and life and was suffering accordingly.

“My favorite part was when Red dropped the ring for the second time,” Angel said.

“My favorite part was when Red’s mom put her head down,” Miles said.

Louis didn’t have a favorite part because he was still a little too emotional to speak about any of it without tearing up. The other two patted at him sympathetically.

“You guys should take some pictures,” May said. “Peter, go take pictures. Make people look nice.”

Was that an order?

May gave him a long-suffering look.

“Alright,” he said, “But y’all are taking a picture of the orange crew first—do you see this coordination? We put effort into this. Angel, take my phone. Don’t fuck it up.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're still confused: Agave/PParker = Uncomfortable Spidey = Andrew Garfield Spidey 
> 
> He was uncomfortable to Blondie because he met him while he was talking about his unfortunate relationship with his Gwen and Blondie got a little squicked out since he's only met one Gwen so far. Also he's bi. Fight me marvel


	12. the Bean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Welcome to the Windy City,” Blondie said with his still too bright smile. “Your teammates for the night are Benj,” he gestured after the flapping tails of the guy’s coat, “Lance Corporal Wilson,” a tall, dark haired guy with a rifle strapped across his back waved at them cheerfully, “and the Blind Devil himself.” 
> 
> “EH?” the alternate Matt barked their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Please, please, please read this author's note. There are SO many spideys and alters. I've specifically written this out so that we continue to know who's who, but there is not much else I can do for y'all if you don't read it.**  
>  (I will not be answering any comments asking who's who in this chapter. I'm just going to refer everyone back to this note, so for real, save yourself the trouble)
> 
>    
> Peter/Tats = Inimitable Spidey  
> Wade/WadeWilson = Inimitable Wade  
> Matt/Big Red/Daredevil = Inimitable Matt  
> Bitsy = Inimitable Miles  
> Itsy = ITSV Miles  
> GwenStacy = ITSV Gwen  
> Blondie = ITSV Peter  
> Big Peter/B Parker= ITSV Peter B  
> WadeB = ITSV Peter B's Wade Wilson (see 'rippling' for more info on him)  
> Doc = ITSV Peter B's Miles Morales (see 'hello brooklyn' for more on him)  
> PParker = Andrew Garfield Spidey  
> Benj/Noir = Spiderman Noir  
> The Blind Devil/Mathieu/Maidiú = Noir Matt Murdock  
> Lance Corporal Wilson = Noir Wade Wilson  
> Shortstack = In technicolor Peter  
> Funsize = DFV Peter
> 
> PHEW. Alright. You may now carry on.

**SM:** Good morning everyone. Hope y’all slept well (or at all). Matt I still can’t believe that you took that many shots in front of your mom.

 **DD:** it was MY wedding.

 **S2:** everyone knows DD. Do you remember sitting in Mr Nelson’s lap and calling him beautiful for like an hour or no

 **DD:** I did what now

 **SM:** anyways beautiful people

 **SM:** drink some water and gird your loins. we gotta go to Chicago tonight. I’m gonna add everyone to the group chat again, but like. Just so you all know, there are literally more people there right now than can possibly be good or holy.

 **DP (´** **｡** **✪ω** **✪** **｡´)** : yo red are you really okay to be coming? You cried for ages last night

 **DD:** what the fuck

 **DD:** apprentice. Are these facts?

 **BT:** can confirm. Crying occurred. Crying on me occurred. I have never been so cried on.

 **D2:** it was so sweet tho

 **S2:** why didn’t you cry on me old man I am worthy of tears

 **BT:** evidently not

 **S3:** are we all aware that it is ass thirty in the morning?

 **S2:** louis is hungover lol

 **S2:** poor baby doesn’t have a healing factor aw

 **S3:** for real, girl? You don’t either?? And at least I can legally drink

 **S4:** morning! I just looked in the group chat, Spidey. It’s kind of a lot. If we’re going 2nd, do we know the team we’re paired with for tonight?

 **SM:** Uuuuuuuuuh

 **SM:** No.

 **SM:** but I’m about to

 

 

 **Tats:** hey everyone

 **Blondie:** ✨🎇🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🎇✨

 **Itsy:** HE LIVES

 **B Parker:** that’s amazing because I’m dying

 **Doc:** that’s your own fault

 **B Parker:** silence you. you’re grounded. Go to your room

 **Doc:** I’m already in my room

 **PParker:** oh my god heeeeeeeey Tats. So how was the wedding?

 **Tats:** @PParker it was great. Our Red dropped his husband’s ring down a drain and then held his apprentice hostage for 20min to cry on him while the rest of us sat with Fogs and learned all about his stoner days. Also woah, hi. New person, who are you?

 **Itsy:** a target

 **B Parker:** Doc is my Miles.

 **Doc:** ✌

 **B Parker:** he’s grounded tho don’t talk to him

 **Doc:** 👍

 **B Parker:** WadeB is also my guy

 **WadeB:** WADE BENJAMIN

 **B Parker:** ignore him too pls

 **WadeB:** WADE BENJAMIN PARKER

 **B Parker:** I’m so sorry everyone

 **Tats:** lol it’s cool. Hey, can I get a report?

 **Tats:** actually, before that--I’ve gotta add my team. Sorry!! I promise I’ll take everyone out at the end of the night

 **Blondie:** it’s cool tats, B’s folks are leaving soon

 **Tats:** okay thank you

 

 **[Tats** has added **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** , **Daredevil, Dave, LittleSpidey, Louis,** and **Bitsy** to the chat]

 

 **Tats:** sorry B, everyone’s here now. Can you give us a report? You guys were Group 1, right?

 **B Parker:** unfortunately yes

 **B Parker:** Report’s pretty straightforward. Since we went in as one team, we had to put one guy on each of the delivery points. Didn’t really have too many problems. Ran into 2 mob bosses trying to reassert their authority. Doc took care of one. Our Red took care of the other. They’re hiding up in the northern part of the city licking their wounds. the good news overall is that we have A)

 **WadeB:** acquired more coke

 **B Parker:** A) collected more illicit material which is NOT to be snorted

 **B Parker:** and B) have verified that the folks you guys are up against are pretty much nothing. There’s just a lot of them. There’s a handful of people who have been recruited from Toronto and more stragglers from all over the Midwest. The guys Murderdock brought onto our side the other night are also actually pretty nice, btw. So if any of you need to, you can leave them in charge of collecting deliveries; especially if you happen to have a smaller team like us

 **WadeB:** I.e. If your Red is a fuckhead and decides that he needs to try to maim every crime boss in the great lakes area

 **Doc:** He’s not a fuckhead I’m p sure that’s his idea of teamwork.

 **WadeB:** no. that’s his idea of showing off. he is trying to steal my man

 **B Parker:** and we’re back to this

 **WadeB:** HE FLIRTED WITH YOU

 **B Parker:** wade calling me a dumbass is not flirting

 **WadeB:** THAT’S HOW YOU FLIRT WITH ME

 **B Parker:** anyways Tats. The floor’s yours. I think you’re on with Benj tonight? Blondie, is he on with Benj?

 **Blondie:** Can confirm. Benj is going to meet you guys, but he doesn’t have a phone, so you may have to get a little creative with getting ahold of him

 **LittleSpidey:** what do you mean he doesn’t have a phone? Who doesn’t have a phone?

 **Tats:** Benj is from the 1930s girl no one has phones

 **LittleSpidey:** fuck are you for real? How are we supposed to know if he needs backup then??

 **Blondie:** yeah….to be fair he’s actually very tech savvy for his period so he might be alright if we let him borrow someone else’s phone. I’d give him mine but idk if that’s a great idea. Anyone have anything that looks more like a walkie-talkie?

 **WadeB:** HOT TAKE

 **B Parker:** for the love of god wade go the fuck to sleep already

 **WadeB:** what if you used REAL walkie-talkies?? Radios? Eh? Eh? Eh?

 **Doc:** yeah man great idea let’s just go ahead and call the stone age and see if they have any available

 **Tats:** Stone age contacted. I can acquire a radio. I’ll bring it set up tonight. How many transceivers should I bring for the other team?

 **Blondie:** I’m gonna say 3 to be safe but Idk if Benj’s Murdock knows how to use one.

 **B Parker:** are you serious rn? No. No he does not.

 **Blondie:** okay so like 3 optimistically, with the understanding that you may spend all night trying to teach Benj’s Murdock how to use one.

 **Tats:** roger that. Alright guys, thanks for everything. See everyone again this Friday?

 **Blondie:** that’s a yes—I think you’re with my team that night? Miles are we with them on Fri?

 **Itsy:** yep!! Gwen and Agave might join us to even out the teams

 **PParker:** say what

 **GwenStacy:** you heard him booboo 😘

 **PParker:** sorry y’all I got this thing on fri

 **GwenStacy:** you can’t escape stop trying

 **Tats:** perfect! Thank you all and good night

 

 

Peter had radios. He knew he had radios because between the ages of 9 and 11, he’d decided they were mankind’s greatest invention and had spent his evenings standing on Uncle Ben’s toes, wrapped around his chest, begging him to teach him how to wire and unwire them. Ben was more than happy to oblige. He had always had a fascination with old radios himself, especially the 1920s models. He thought they were beautiful, practical devices and May still had the one he’d built himself in an art nouveau style on the kitchen counter.

Neither May or Peter had been able to bring themselves to throw away the collection of scrap parts and pieces that Ben had tenderly stowed away at the top of the hall closet.

And so there they were, reliable, though a little dusty, just like Ben himself.

May perched on the arm of the couch with a mug full of steaming tea and watched Peter assemble the parts into a functional device.

“If he could see you now,” she said over the lip of her mug.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If only he could.

 

 

Angel and Miles had taken to calling each other increasingly rude names on the radios from each side of the meeting roof by the time Matt appeared to complete the team that night. He was bleary and valiantly pretending that he hadn’t spent the whole day in a state of dehydration and vertigo.

Wade fixed that by flicking him in the ear.

Peter let their shitty attitudes roll around on the concrete while he got ahold of Blondie to let him know that they were all ready for take off whenever he was.

Blondie asked for five minutes to get the other team settled and briefed.

 

 

Five minutes later saw Blondie’s unearthly eyes emerging out of the space in between universes. His eyes were never this blue when he was settled into one universe or another, Peter had noticed. No, in those moments they were sea green. Turquoise almost.

When Blondie was in the In-Between, however, the blues hues of his irises seemed to wash, waver, and shimmer over each other like pigments in water and water in the sun.

Blondie’s smile also seemed whiter as he held out a hand and welcomed them all back through the gateway of space and time.

 

 

Chicago was.

Well.

Not New York.

And Peter found that he was not the person most insulted by this.

No, it wasn’t Benj either.

It was the guy who Benj was busy chasing after and trying to herd away from the sides of the roof that the team had stepped out onto.

The man threw hand after hand at every side of the cityscape he encountered in disgust and he kept up a running, scathing commentary to Benj as he did so.

Peter raised an eyebrow at this duo and then looked back at Blondie.

“Welcome to the Windy City,” Blondie said with his still too bright smile. “Your teammates for the night are Benj,” he gestured after the flapping tails of the guy’s coat, “Lance Corporal Wilson,” a tall, dark haired guy with a rifle strapped across his back waved at them cheerfully, “and the Blind Devil himself.”

“EH?” the alternate Matt barked their way.

He, like his buddies, was all black and white, but man. Them freckles could have been seen from space. So could the scars that ripped down from his eyebrows to his jaw on each side of his face.

This Matt’s eyes didn’t open. Nor did he wear anything to hide them.

He apparently hadn’t been examining the cityscape so much as giving each side of it a good listen and sniff before writing it off as complete and utter trash of the lowest kind.

Benj took his moment of distraction to catch his arm and to try to explain to him what was going on. He gave a little hopeful jerk back in the direction of the others, but the Blind Devil sunk in his heels. He said something to Benj which Peter couldn’t make out. Then he raised his face at the rest of them and threw up a grumpy hand, only to carry on spouting more unintelligible sounds, this time specifically down at Benj.

“Right, so he’s Irish,” Blondie explained lightly from behind them.

Holy _fuck_.

“Does he speak English?” Wade asked tactfully over Matt’s amazed head.

“That _is_ his English,” Blondie said.

They all looked over to where Benj was standing, still pulling delicately at the Blind Devil’s sleeve, while getting an earful.

“I can’t understand half of what he says either,” Lance Corporal Wilson informed them all with a shrug and a hint of a drawl, “But he can understand us, so we’re more or less in business.”

The lance corporal was tall, smooth-skinned and unfairly aware of it.

“Oh my god,” Little Spidey gasped, “Wade, is that what you used to look like?”

Wade considered it.

Everyone else considered him.

“Nah, this guy’s prettier,” Wade pronounced. “Hey, how the fuck’d you hit corporal?”

The lance corporal shrugged.

“Didn’t fuckin’ die, I guess,” he said.

That was apt answer from a World War I vet, Peter figured.

“Do you know how to use a radio?” he asked.

The lance corporal scoffed.

“Do I know how to—of _course_ I know how to use a goddamned—hey, St. Patrick, do you hear this shit?”

The Blind Devil volleyed a string of invectives at the lance corporal which more or less expressed how he felt about this nickname. He took the initiative to grab Benj in one of his huge paws and half-drag, half-carry him over to the corporal, so that he could gesticulate at the guy while making alternatively guttural and lilting sounds.

The corporal was unfazed.

“Yeah, sure,” he said to whatever the devil was saying, “Whatever you want, ya Irish bastard. Just bend over and hold still, would ya? We gotta strap a wireless to you or something. Lord knows you look like you can handle it.”

Benj’s horror was visible through his mask _and_ his goggles and he held up hands between the other two, saying, “We are going to be friendly, please!”

The other two paused.

“This is friendly,” the Lance Corporal said. He looked over to the Devil. “We’re bein’ friendly, aren’t we?”

The Devil’s face, up close, looked like it had seen the sharp side of a blade. Peter winced as he imagined exactly how the guy had gone blind.

“Oh, aye,” the Devil rasped out like a piece of chalk on a cheese grater. “’F we weren’t some kinda friendly, this one here’d already be rollin’ in his grave, son.”

Matt was delighted.

Wade was charmed.

The rest of them were slightly horrified. Benj included.

He turned his goggles very deliberately in Peter’s direction.

“You wanna take the south?” he asked stiffly.

“Yeah, we’ll take the south,” Peter told him.

 

 

They headed down south.

They split the team in half, with Wade, Louis, and Little Spidey heading down to the southmost delivery point and Peter, Miles, and both Daredevils taking the one closest to them.

Peter and his team crashed into their delivery point almost immediately. It wasn’t a huge place, but an old billiards hall with flickering neon lights in the front window and a back entrance that led to a flight of carpet-covered stairs.

The smell of must and sawdust and mold guided them all down the stairs and then down a long hallway with dark green baseboards and doorframes. There was a swipe of yellow light peeking out from one of the doors and this one, Matt leaned in to listen to. He nodded. Peter reached over next to him and knocked.

Just once.

Shave and a haircut.

The soft noises that Peter hadn’t even realized he’d been hearing in the hall went silent.

“Who’s there?” a voice called through the door.

B had given them all a signal. A soft, low whistle. Dave made it for them and there was a collective sigh of relief behind the door.

It opened and they all stood up and were welcomed into their very own mob operation, right in the heart of Chicago.

 

 

The guys sorting through the impressive collection of drugs stacked up neatly in the underground room really were, as B had said, pretty chill guys. They all thought that Matt was Murderdock and lit up in a chorus of ‘Eeeeey!’ at his entrance.

Matt played the part and said nothing to give himself away. The touch he laid on Peter’s shoulder told him to shut up and pretend too. They let Miles and Dave do the talking to keep up the illusion among these guys that they were Murderdock and the Big Spidey who’d rolled in here the nights before.

Dave and Miles managed to ascertain that more drugs had come in that night from a couple of guys from a few different organizations. They were awaiting payment, now, their men said. Matt made a show of giving Peter a knowing look and smirk, which he returned and then tapped Miles’s shoulder to translate for the others.

Those guys weren’t getting their money that night.

The folks in the underground room took that pretty well, with an air of ‘well, that ain’t _my_ problem, so carry on, sir.’

Peter liked them. Matt told them in his best impression of Murderdock’s smarminess to keep up the good work. He said he’d be sending someone around to check in on them again after midnight and with that, they all turned and left the men to their business.

 

“Well, that was easy,” Miles noted once they were back out on the street.

Peter offered him a hand and then gave him a toss up to the roof of the building in front of them. He offered Matt and Dave a boost too. Dave took it. Matt scoffed and found a foothold in the window to boost himself up after.

“Given the level of shit we’re seeing, I imagine that the problem isn’t gonna be about complexity here,” Matt said as Peter joined them on the roof. “It’s more about endurance.” He twisted his face around from left to right, snakelike.

“There’re ten deals going on in these four blocks,” he said. “We’re gonna have to pace ourselves or else we’ll start flagging before the check-in.”

“Got it,” Peter said. “Alright, I’m happy to split up for now. If anyone gets tired, call it in and we’ll get you onto a team. Keep an ear out for the other guys on the comms, by the way. If all goes well, we won’t hear from them, but just in case, I put them on our same frequency.”

And so the night began.

 

 

It had been a while since Peter was just out fighting crime on his own like this. It reminded him of his early days.

Well, not exactly.

He hadn’t been this graceful or efficient in his early days.

Now, he could take the knees out from under one guy while disarming his partner. Back then, he’d have been lucky not to get his own knees taken out in the process and he’d have been even luckier not to douse himself with web.

In fact, now that he thought about it. He’d actually been kind of ridiculously lucky in the start of all this. Maybe he’d just used it all up?

He dumped another man and his frenemy into the dumpster behind him and touched the tips of his fingers to his mask.

If he’d known that there was only a limited supply of luck from the get-go, he would have been more careful with it.

A guy with a knife tried to catch him off guard while he was thinking.

Peter added him to the Bad Man receptacle. He stopped a few feet away from the dumpster and then went back.

He liberated a few backpacks from their owners, to uproarious outcry from said owners, and shook them out over the asphalt in front of the dumpster. He stuffed the little piles of plastic bags that fell out of the bags into the crevices of his suit. And then he was ready to go.

 

 

He emerged whistling from a cute little den he’d found crammed between two clubs a few blocks over and the nonstop screech of sirens, far and near, told him that the others were doing a bang-up job on their designated parts of the city. He headed back to the delivery point to drop off the drugs and then climbed up high to take a moment to listen in on folks through the comms.

Just in case.

Things sounded more or less like they were going smoothly.

So off he went again. This time towards the Bean.

 

 

At around 11, he bumped into the Blind Devil who was a little confused and had crossed the boundary between the north and south sides of the city. He was getting fucked over by all the sirens and he had definitely forgotten how to use his radio.

Peter offered to take him back to the boundary line and he said something which Peter thought sounded like ‘Much appreciated, lad,’ and held out his arm to take Peter’s elbow tenderly.

On the way over, Peter decided fuck it, and asked him how he’d gone blind.

The devil wasn’t offended. He explained that his dad had made a deal with some mobsters over a couple of matches back when he was a kid. Things had gone south and they’d taken the devil’s eyes as collateral. But that was tough shit for them because a couple years before that, the devil had been working with his pops at the docks and one of the crates they were moving had slipped off its hook and landed right onto him. It cracked and whatever was in it had cracked with it, seeped through the hay around it, and dripped down all over the devil’s face. He’d never really been able to see much after that. So in the end, all that he really got out of the mob incident was facial scarring.

“So my da says, ach, what can we do with ye boy? With your face all like that? Well, the only game you’re suited for is mine,” the Blind Devil explained to Peter once they were once again standing on his side of the boundary. Peter found he could understand him better the longer he listened to his accent.

“So he says come here. And so I go, and he teaches me how to box, you see. And he says, only half of boxin’ is seein’, son. The rest of its all in your head. You just need to out-think your man on the other side there. And that, son, he says, that’s something the likes of you are suited for above nothin’ else.”  

“So you’re a boxer?” Peter asked.

“Aye, with my father. We’re a double-act these days,” the Blind Devil said with a gleaming smile.

“That’s really cool, you guys must be close,” Peter said.

This pleased the devil immensely.

“Aye, very close. I’d give my beatin’ heart for my Da, you know? Whatever he needs, I’d give it to him. ‘Cept of course, he can’t be knowing about all this.” The devil swept a hand out in front of him. “Just thinkin’ about it’d give the old man a coronary. And before I’d even know it, he’d be locking me back up, threatening to make me a clerk all over again.”

Awwwwww.

Peter decided the Blind Devil could stay.

Watching him subsequently slam two separate sets of guys right into each other and then into the gutter like wet sacks of cement only solidified that notion.

 

 

He was about 20 perps into the night when he stumbled upon Miles again. Miles was doing pretty well for his first marathon. He’d bagged a respectable 13 people and had lined them up nicely on the curb of a particular road so that they might have solidarity while they waited for the cops to come pick them up.

Miles informed him that he’d seen Dave and Matt fucking with a whole gang of folks a couple blocks west and Peter gave him a noogie, then went to go watch.

 

 

Matt and Dave were indeed being dickheads about four blocks over, but that was allowed since these folks had been dickheads first.

The two hornheads were arguing over the lyrics of The Ants Go Marching because Matt was adamant that this was just a bastardized version of a Civil War song and Dave refused to taint the memory of his daughter’s first favorite song with such war-themes.

The argument was doing a fan-fucking-tastic job of freaking out the eight guys the two of them kept circling tighter and tighter around.

Peter called over to them a reminder that this predatory behavior could continue only until 1, and then left the group to it to go find him some a new nest of perps to stick his foot into.

 

 

All good things come to an end and by the time 1am rolled around, he headed back from his newfound home on top of a crane. He had collected a whole line of terrified new friends up there with him. He considered leaving his new pals up there for a minute to think about what their life choices, but then took pity on them and relined them up along the top of a storage container immediately under the crane.

He secured everyone to each other nice and tight, called the police, and bid them all a good morning before skipping off back towards the meeting roof.

 

 

Wade and Little Spidey were listening to Lance Corporal Wilson telling stories in a hideous French accent when Peter got back to the meeting roof.

It turned out he was imitating his superior officer from his time on the Western Front. Apparently he’d had and continued to have a bone to pick with this guy over some highly mobile cigarette hoards.

He was actually more than capable of understanding and speaking proper French, Wilson revealed slyly to his rapt audience, but where was the fun in that?

“You gotta get your kicks in where you can during war, honey,” he told Little Spidey with a wink.

“I dunno if that’s like, the _best_ place to get ‘em in, but I believe you,” she said.

“If you can’t get ‘em in during war, you ain’t getting them in anywhere,” Wade argued.

“Amen to that, brother,” Wilson said.

“Who are we kicking?” Matt asked as he and Dave hauled themselves up over the side of the roof. Matt turned back and caught Louis’s hand to help him up.

“No one,” Peter said. “They’re talking about jokes.”

“Bummer.”

Really, Matt? You’ve had 3 hours of ass kicking and you’re still complaining?

 

 

Peter heard more than saw Benj hit the roof around 1:30. The flapping of fabric followed by a burst of coughing sent him turning around just in time to catch Benj struggling with his goggles.

He was covered in white powder.

He gave up the fight with his goggles and shucked the whole mask, then shuffled up to shake himself off.

“It’s not cocaine,” he coughed before folks could start panicking. “It’s flour. Ran through a bakery to get here.”

And like.

Word.

“Oh my god, you’re twelve,” Angel gasped.

And in the blink of an eye, Benj realized what he’d done. He slapped hands over his face, but it was too late. Lance Corporal Wilson was up like a shot and all up in Benj’s face with a finger crying, “I _knew_ it! Where the hell’s that Irish bastard? He owes me three damn dollars, I _told_ him.”

Uh?

“Shut up, shut up, don’t tell anyone,” Benj said, wrapping his hands around the lance corporal’s face.

The guy danced out of his grasp like an eel.

“No, no. You come on over here, talkin’ fancy, acting all big. Makin’ bombs and buyin’ liquor,” he said, slipping easily out of Benj’s reach with every grab, “All, ‘let’s make a deal.’ But I _knew_ —where the fuck is that damn devil?—I told him I _knew_ you were out here, posturing. You hear me? The size of your wrists, boy—who do you think you’re foolin’, huh? I swear, if you’re older than 20, I’ll eat my damn hat.”

“You don’t _have_ a hat,” Benj emphasized in exasperation. “And it’s none of your goddamn—”

“You watch your mouth, son. Talkin’ to your elders like—OH THANK GOD. Mathieu, come here, darlin’, I got news you’re gonna _love_.”

The Blind Devil made a highly guilty expression and started to slink away from the roof his fingers had just grazed the edge of. The Lance Corporal wasn’t having it. He scrambled over there and yanked the guy the rest of the up, then dragged him over to place just barely out of Benj’s personal space bubble.

“There,” he said, jabbing a finger at Benj. Benj recoiled and hugged his arms tight around himself. “You seein’ what I’m seein’ here, Devil? This guy’s a kid. Ain’t older than twenty, hand to god.”

The Devil very graciously did not remark on the fact that he could see exactly fuck all.

Instead, he nodded gravely.

“You owe me money, motherfucker, pay up,” The Lance Corporal demanded.

The devil huffed.

“You think I’m walkin’ around with three dollars on me?” he said, “Here, I’ll pay youse in pennies.”

“I ain’t want your stinkin’ pennies. Bills or nothing, boxer-boy—hey. Spiderkid. Come clean; how off am I? Wait, no. Let me guess. Seventeen? Eighteen and a quarter? Just a really fuckin’ tall sixteen and a half??”  

Benj gave Peter a look which said very clearly, ‘I will give you anything you want right now if you make these people _stop_.’

Peter took pity on him.

“This one’s fourteen,” he announced, sending Miles stumbling forward.

The other two went dead silent.

“Now that’s just illegal,” the Lance Corporal decided.

 

 

Benj, now furious with himself for having been so careless, tried to get everyone back on track by loudly pointing out that they only had another couple of hours in the city. If everyone was fine, then they needed to go check in with their delivery points one more time and get back to kicking ass and taking names.

 Angel softened and offered herself up to him as a fellow nineteen-year-old Spidey and Peter thought that it did actually make Benj feel a little better. Not that he would ever say that. Instead he said ‘it doesn’t even matter’ about thirty times and tried to jump off the roof.

The lance corporal showed no sign of letting the matter drop at all, however, and had since extracted from the Blind Devil his age. In the wake of this information, he declared himself the _de facto_ leader of the 1930s team by reason of seniority. And as acting leader, he refused to allow Benj the privilege of running off out of his sight.

“I run a tight ship,” the corporal threatened, “And y’all are either going to fall in or fall out, you hear me?”

The Devil asked if he could fall out.

He was informed that his debts now made that impossible, so pay up or shut up.

Eventually, to settle the ire that was rapidly rising among the three from the thirties, Wade announced that he and Little Spidey would take Benj onto their team to do a final sweep up north. Benj pleaded with Peter with his face to not let that happen.

He couldn’t bear to be with another Wade at the minute.

Peter sighed and let his Lab Manager side wash over him.

Stupid.

This was all just so stupid. And unnecessary.

“Alright, alright, everyone shut the fuck up,” he snapped. “Here’s what we’re going to do and if you don’t like it—go eat bricks or something, I don’t care. I want out of this sauna as soon as possible.”

The attention he got was gratifying.

“Excellent,” he said. “So. Two teams, again. We need either a Red or a Spidey to step into each delivery point one last time to take stock for the night—see if anyone’s come by. More deliveries. Any threats from the bosses up north. Shots fired. Anything like that. Wade, you and the Lance Corporal go ahead and take Matt, Dave, and our Irish pal north. Check in and do one last sweep of the place after that. All Spideys, you come with me. Louis, you’re the tallest, you’ve got the middle check point. Miles, go with him. Little Spidey, you, me and Benj are headed to the southmost point. As soon as the check in is done, go out and clear as much of the area as possible, alright Louis? We’ll all meet back here at 3am.”

 “Is that doable?” he asked the group.

Yeah, it was.

 

**3:02am**

**Blondie:** hey everyone?

 **Blondie:** are y’all done or?

 **Tats:** almost there.

 **Blondie:** ETA?

 **Tats:** hold on let me ask the others

 **Tats:** got word in. ETA 15min. Meeting at original entry point

 **Blondie:** 👍👍👍👍

 

 

His feet had barely hit the blessed, tepid hardwood of his own apartment when the next texts came in.

He was almost too tired to open his phone, but alas.

The things we do in the name of duty.

 

 **Tats:** what’s up y’all?

 **PParker:** hey you made it!!

 **B Parker:** 🎉

 **GwenStacy:** how’d it go??

 **Tats:** went well. Benj and his team did good.

 **Blondie:** 😃

 **GwenStacy:** am I next?

 **Blondie:** no, Funsize and Shortstack are next. Are you guys awake?

 **Shortstack:** yea

 **Funsize:** yes

 **Blondie:** great. can you give report, Tats? Just so the wee ones know what to expect in a couple of hours here?

 

Yeah.

Yeah, he could.

Fuck, it was almost 4.

Ugh, 3 hours until work.

…and 30 until AcaDec nationals.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when I went to Ireland, despite having grown up with my gran's accent, I found myself sitting awash in a field of very comforting, rhythmic sounds, often with no fucking idea of what people were trying to say to me. 
> 
> Which is to say, in short, that I adore Irish accents and Noir!Matt/Maidiú def has a thick one.


	13. compost heaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d rather row to DC than suffer this injury. On land. He was willing to row on land.
> 
> “Come on, Parker, it ain’t that bad,” Flash consoled. “It’ll be just like old times.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to school shooting/bringing firearms on campus in this chapter. Please do what you need to to take care of yourselves!

His phone went off and the only thing that kept him from hurling it through the wall and into the damn street was the fact that his foot got stuck in the sheets and he fell off the bed entirely.

It was one way to save himself from himself.

It was also a harbinger.

 

 

“Dude,” MJ said when he arrived, gasping, to the gaping maw that was the front of the yellow school bus the school had so kindly rented for the kids to ride to DC. “Did you run here?”

“Yes,” he panted.

“From _Queens?_ ” MJ said.

He braced both hands on the sides of the door to catch his breath.

“Peter, are you fucking serious right now?”

“Missed the train,” Peter told his knees.

“So you—Just take a cab!”

“Missed the cab,” Peter gritted out.

MJ sucked in a frustrated breath.

“I am here,” Peter told her on his own exhale. “I am here, wearing clothes, with my phone and my keys. Let me have this, MJ, I need this.”

Everything else was a fucking disaster. From the broken doorknob to the sudden lack of hot water to the short-circuiting toaster. It was all a fucking disaster.

Fate did not want Peter to leave this city, and the fact that he had gotten to this godforsaken bus, almost on time even, was truly an act of defiance.

MJ finally let out the breath she’d sucked in.

“Fine. Whatever,” she said, “But just so you know—”

“Hey! Would you look at that! The prodigal son made it after all!”

Dear Lord, no.

Was there a seat for Elijah on that bus? Because this is what every one of Peter’s dreams of the End Times felt like.

Flash beamed down at him from the bus window above his head.

Peter didn’t look up at him. He knew he was there. He didn’t need further confirmation.

“Tell me this is the wrong bus,” he pleaded with MJ.

“Our bus broke,” she said. “MST didn’t have enough kids to fill theirs. Only made sense to smash the two teams together. They got here like ten minutes before you did.”

Why, God, _why_??

He’d rather _row_ to DC than suffer this injury. On land. He was willing to row on land.

“Come on, Parker, it ain’t that bad,” Flash consoled. “It’ll be just like old times.”

Peter stared at MJ in silence.

“It’ll be just like old times,” she said with a strained smile.

 

 

He boarded the bus, and, navigating his way down the aisle the row MJ had claimed as theirs, he felt exactly fifteen years old all over again. He dropped down heavily and made the mistake of glancing up over the seats.

A sea of yellow blazers looked back at him.

“Peter, are you okay?” Ernie’s sweet little angelic voice asked him across the aisle.

“I’m great,” he creaked, “Why do you ask?”

Ernie looked back at her fellow blue-blazered companions for support and apparently finding encouragement, said very gently, “You look like you’re gonna cry.”

 

 

He did not cry.

But it was a close thing. Close enough that MJ sat on him to distract him while she called a final roll call. When she was done, Abe—damn, look at Abe in his fancy tie—called roll for the MST team as well.

“Alright,” Abe said cheerfully, “Looks like we’re good to go. Are you ready, kids?”

The whole MST team answered his call with the requisite ‘Aye, aye, captain!’

“I’m gonna puke,” Peter told MJ seriously.

She shoved him into the window.

“I can’t hear you!” Abe sang.

“Oh my god,” Ganke whispered in the seat right behind Peter.

“I’m gonna puke, Michelle. I’m gonna puke,” Peter pleaded with her.

“Wait until we’re headed downhill,” she told him.

“Aye, aye, Captain!” the MST kids cheered even louder than before.

Flash and Felicia turned around to shine brilliant grins at Peter and MJ.

Peter sat up to start signing ‘I fucking hate you’ at them, but MJ smashed him up against the window again.

“We are adults,” she reminded him. “We are capable, mature adults.”

He was not going to survive this fucking trip.

God, he should have listened to Fate. She’d only been looking out for him.

 

 

About ten minutes into their journey to the swampy hell that was the capital, Felicia squirmed around in her and Flash’s seat in front of Peter and MJ.

“How’ve you guys been?” she asked.

Felicia had grown her hair out and swept it up into some kind of mysteriously braided up-do. She’d also gotten different, rounder glasses.  

“Not dead yet,” MJ answered for the two of them.

It was a valiant attempt, yes, but Felicia would never be satisfied with that, gossip hound that she was. Peter wondered if he could get his knees up to his face with all the negligible room he had. They were already bumping up against the back of Felicia’s but he was pretty bendy.

“You were in the news a while back, weren’t you, Peter?” Felicia wheedled.

Thanks, girl. For the reminder and for drawing the attention of every minor on this damn bus.

That was real swell of ya.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Peter said.

“Norman Osborn, right?” Flash said, turning around to join this ‘Rehash Parker’s Trauma’ party.

“He just said he didn’t want to talk about it,” MJ growled. “Lay off.”

God.

This was literally highschool. They had literally been transported back to highschool.

There was a slightly awkward pause.

“Sorry,” Felicia said.

She turned back around.

 

About an hour in, Felicia and Flash decided to lead the MST team in a practice session. Complete with timers and flashcards. And sure, when they and MJ and Peter had been in AcaDec instead of coaching it, that would have been cool, but now, Peter was intimately aware of all the Visions kids in the back of the bus with them, chewing their fingers and trying to pretend their sneakers and blazers were newer and nicer than they were.

Yeah, no. Fuck that.

He nudged MJ with his shoulder and made meaningful eye contact. She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s not fair to tell them not to practice,” she said.

“It’s not fair to make us all suffer Sponge Bob,” Peter replied.

A pause.

MJ stood up.

All of the Visions kids looked up at her. Peter popped up next to her to shield the kids from seeing their competition through the aisle.

“What year was the Boston Tea party?” MJ asked.

The kids started to brighten up.

 

 

About three hours into the awkward journey to hell, DC, they collectively stopped to unleash the children upon an unused playground and to eat an early lunch. Peter, perhaps more sleep-deprived than he’d thought, immediately started counting heads. MJ caught him at it with a strong eyebrow.

“You’re not at work, Peter,” she said.

Yes, well. That _would_ explain why no matter how many times he tried, he couldn’t make 12 out of the ten blue-blazers scampering around.

 

 

MJ had packed a lunch for them—thank god, because Peter hadn’t had a snowball’s chance in hell of throwing something together before he left that morning.

They sat on a bench, trying not to wince as the kids scarfed their own lunches and flung themselves at the playground equipment. Really, they were all too big to be using it, but there weren’t any moms with strollers around, so Peter and MJ figured that they couldn’t be causing too much damage.

“I don’t want kids,” MJ announced apropos of nothing.

Peter blinked and turned her way.

“Okay?” he said. “Mood or declaration?”

She thought about it.

“Mood,” she said. “Possible declaration.”

Alright, noted.

“Ned wants kids,” Peter pointed out.

“Do you want kids?” MJ asked him.

Uh. Well. Hm.

He thought of the other Spiderpeople. None of those Peters had kids, although, to be fair, B had practically adopted the entire brood against his will.

“I dunno if I’m dad-material,” he said.

“I think you are,” MJ said lightly, settling back into the bench and staring out at teenagers before them.

“I got dad-energy?” Peter clarified.

“In droves.”

“Aw, yeah. Hey, can you imagine me with a little one? Baby boy—”

“Girl.”

“Girl?”

MJ sniffed.

“Or whatever they want to be—but for now. Girl. You look like the daughter-type.”

He didn’t know what that meant, but sure, whatever.

“Baby girl,” he amended. “Can you imagine me with a baby girl, swinging through the—”

“Oh hell, no. Not with our daughter,” MJ snapped. “She stays where gravity put her. No exceptions.”

Uh.

So.

That got kind of intense.

“I thought you didn’t—”

“Shut up,” MJ said. “I didn’t say that.”

The silence just got more awkward the longer it went on.

“Okay, so then we’re talkin’ a maybe on the—”

“Shut up, Parker.”

MJ stood up and abandoned him on the bench. Peter turned around and watched her go, trying to piece together the words and tones MJ was offering with all the things that shewasn’t saying. He’d gotten better at it over the years.

“Yikes,” Flash’s voice interrupted.

Ugh.

“She’s fine,” Peter said. Flash bared his teeth in sympathy.

“Y’all are talking kids now?” he asked. “Well, damn. Look at you, Parker. All domestic and shit.”

“This is the first time it’s come up,” Peter hummed.

“Sensitive topic, apparently,” Flash noted with uncharacteristic insight. Peter twisted himself back to look up at the guy.

“You want something, man?”

Flash bit his lip, then dropped his shoulder.

“Yeah, actually. Can I sit?” He gestured to MJ’s abandoned spot. Peter waved him on. Once he was situated, Peter rubbed a couple of knuckles against his jaw.

“So?” he said.

“So I guess, uh. Listen.” Flash sighed. “I just—You remember back when we were kids and I—”

“You already apologized for that shit, Flash. I get it, we were both dumb. It’s fine.”

Flash went quiet for a moment, then flexed his hands on his knees.

“Actually, it’s not,” he said seriously. He raised his head to meet Peter’s eyes. “It’s not fine because I didn’t mean it back then. I mean, yeah, I said it. But I didn’t _mean_ it, Parker. And I’ve had years to, you know, think about this shit. And when my little cousin came to live with me and my family for a while, she started getting bullied and it just made me so _mad_.” Flash’s fingers curled into fists. Peter flicked his eyes at them, then back up to the guy’s face.

“Makes you feel helpless,” he said evenly.

The fingers uncurled slightly.

“Years, Peter,” he said. “I did the same thing those kids did to her to you for years. And when I said I was sorry, I just did it because Morita told me to. And you—you didn’t have to accept that. _I_ wouldn’t have accepted that. But like, every time I see her struggling with that shit, I just think to myself: I was one of those kids, you know? So like, all joking aside. I really am sorry. For real. I’m sure that you already had loads of other shit on your plate back then with your uncle’s passing, and the Stark shit, and you know, just being a kid. And I really made life hard for you, I’m sure. So I’m sorry. I wish I could go back and kick myself in the ass, you know?”

Who the fuck was this guy and what had he done with Flash Thompson?

“You sick?” Peter asked.

Flash gave him a nasty look.

Peter threw up his hands.

“Just checking,” he said. “Just making sure.”

“I’m trying here, man,” Flash gritted out.

Peter sat back and tossed an arm over the back of the bench. He shrugged.

“Yeah, it was pretty shitty,” he admitted. “After Ben passed, everything I ever knew went sideways and all of the sudden, it was like just getting up in the morning was like wading through mud.” He dropped his eyes to his knee. “I appreciate your apology,” he said. “I was pretty pigheaded back then, too, though. You know, we were kids. It’s easier now to look back and find things to feel guilty about.”

“Yeah,” Flash agreed.

Peter watched his face.

“Just for the record, you’re still insufferable,” he said. “Fuckin’ _Sponge Bob_ , man? Come on.”

Flash closed his eyes and chuckled.

“Abe’s idea.”

“Yeah right,” Peter snapped.

He laughed harder this time.

“Don’t even play, man, everyone loves Sponge—yo. You okay?”

A second chill ran through Peter’s body. The Spidey Sense. It zipped up his spine like a razor. He slapped a hand over the base of his neck as it hit the vertebrae there and sent out a feeling like pins and needles. Static. White noise crackling the very back of his skull.

He felt sick. Like he was bobbing up in down in the open ocean.

“Woah, Parker. Peter? Hey, man. You okay? You need to puke?”

What the fuck was happening?

He covered his mouth and lifted his head to find Miles, to see if he was feeling this too. He caught sight of him over by Ganke and the swings. Suddenly still. Staring straight at the ground.

Fuck.

Miles swallowed hard over there and looked back to Peter.

Where was it coming from?

Flash was gone, Peter realized. Must have left to go get water or MJ or someone. A cursory survey of the park revealed nothing untoward. They were no longer the only AcaDec troop there. Another two buses had pulled up with different names painted on their sides. There were a group of kids bounding around in navy blazers and another group in green. But beyond that, nothing.

Another wave of nausea rolled over Peter’s stomach and the buzz in the back of his brain crackled again.

Fuck.

“Peter?”

MJ knelt next to him with a bottle of water in hand.

“You okay?”

There was nothing here. Just kids. Just teachers. Buses. Playground shit.

He told the Spidey Sense to chill the fuck out. They didn’t have time for this today. They just needed to be normal for a couple more hours. That was all. Just a couple more hours. When he got home that night, he’d sleep properly. They’d get back on track.

“We’re good,” he told MJ.

He accepted the water bottle, though.

 

 

The last hour to Nationals was tenser and quieter than the first three. Both the Visions team and the MST kids were feeling the pressure. Abe tried to lead them all in some dramatic deep breathing exercises to loosen them up and get a few laughs in, but afterwards the silence resettled over them all, oppressive like the swampy air blowing in through the bus windows.

Peter still felt sick.

They got off at the school Nationals had been held at for as long as Peter could remember and offloaded the kids, dividing them into their respective groups. The coaches then split off to go check their groups in and to collect name badges and lanyards for everyone. Peter waited with the kids while MJ did that. At some point, Ernie edged over, taut as a pulled thread, and nudged Peter slightly.

A hug, she wanted. Reassurance.

He gave it to her.

“You’re all gonna be great,” he said in a tone he didn’t feel.

Miles had tucked a couple of fingers into the fabric over his heart. Anxious, but probably also feeling that same wave of sickness that Peter was. Peter closed his eyes and stretched his Spidey Sense until it pinged against Miles’s. He jumped and stopped flexing his fingers in his shirt.

Peter gestured him over with a few fingers and tucked him under his other arm.

“We’re gonna be just fine,” he sang over their heads. The rest of the kids crowded in a little closer.

 

 

The first event was a series of exams. Fun. There was no real cheering to do in there and coaches weren’t allowed in anyways, so he and MJ, Abe, Felicia, and Flash settled in with the other teachers on the little concrete area outside the testing hall.

It was hot.

Peter was sweaty.

His hands were freezing.

MJ kept shooting him concerned face after concerned face, so he must not have looked great. But he didn’t really have time for that. He was stretching. Stretching the Spidey Sense out and scanning the area. Searching for the cause of its panic.  

Wade had told him once that he looked unusually catlike when he did this. He said that the head tilting and rotating reminded him of how Matt felt and listened his way through the city from up high.

What Wade was actually saying in these observations was ‘you look like a demented owl. Fuckin’ stop already.’

He couldn’t help it. It was just how he functioned.

Just by chance he flicked his eyes over to the fence separating the campus from the street and it was as though his whole body had been electrified. Sparks exploded in his head and distantly, he heard someone say his name.

But the Spidey Sense was in control now. And Peter’s eyes were locked on this fence. Rather, the figure which was squeezing through it.

Green jacket. White shirt. Black backpack. Black gloves.

Why’re you wearing gloves in the middle of May, honey? You feeling cold in the swampland of DC?

Or are you trying to hide your hands?

Someone was saying his name again.

They needed to shut the fuck up. That kid over there was wearing black gloves in the middle of a goddamn heatwave. His backpack didn’t look right. It was resting on something strangely shaped with a strap on it that crossed over the kid’s front. The black of the strap stood out starkly against the white of the shirt underneath it.

“Peter, what are you—oh my god,” MJ breathed. Peter finally looked to her and found himself settled in a half moon of her and the MST coaches. They all saw it now.

“Oh my god, that’s a gun,” Abe said. He started to reach for his phone.

Peter beat him to it. Didn’t even think. Just stood up and threw out an arm. His fingers knew what to do. Just as the kid ducked their head down to sneak around the corner of the building, the web tacked onto the top of the strap and ripped the gun’s strap clean off his shoulder. Peter’s forearm went taut and came to his face automatically and, in not even seconds, he had a gun.

Well, that was handy.

He looked up from the gun and saw the sneaking would-be assailant flat on their face by the fence, then realized uncomfortably that that half moon of people around him were all gaping at him in dead fucking silence.

He reconsidered the gun.

“Wha—what?” Flash said.

This was problematic.

“Dude— _what_?” Abe choked.

Highly problematic.

 

 

Okay, okay, okay. So. Situation bad. Highly bad. Possibly the worst. Second worst, actually, right under what might have happened if Peter had not acquired this new toy.

But seeing as that possibility was one no longer, this certainly was rocketing up there to first place.

“I can explain,” he said to the panicking other four who were now frantically looking around them to see if anyone else had seen him pull that dumbass stunt.

“ _Peter_ ,” MJ growled with fury evident in every line of her body.

Abe came back to earth first after apparently, to his shock, finding the other coaches happily oblivious to what had just happened.

That was lucky. Peter hadn’t exactly been subtle here. Maybe Fate was on his side today after all.

“What the fuck?” Abe swore. He gestured to Peter. “What the fuck?” Then gestured to the assault rifle. “What the _fuck_?” Then turned to MJ and did a cute little flailing thing. “WHAT the FUCK is happening here?”

Oh, you know.

“Just fighting crime?” Peter’s dumbass Spiderman brain decided to say for him.

MJ looked ready to slap him.

“I need you,” she said with unprecedented care. “To _not_ do this right now.”

Uuuuuuuuh.

Well, see. He’d love to do that, but there was kind of an active shooter situation happening right now so…priorities?

“Peter, don’t fucking do this,” MJ said. “Please don’t do this. These kids have worked so hard. They do not need Spiderman right now. They need Peter Parker. Coach Peter Parker.”

Mmmm. The Spidey brain thought otherwise. Peter even had proof otherwise. It looked like an assault rifle. He showed it to her. She covered her face.

“You’re Spiderman?” Flash breathed.

“Oh my god, you’re Spiderman,” Felicia gasped.

This was bad.

This?

Very Bad.

The Spidey brain had a solution for this, but the Peter brain reminded it at max volume that he could not knock out these particular humans. They were his friends and doing so would 100% attract the attention of all of the other coaches around them. He had to be careful about this.

“I knew it,” Felicia hissed. “I _knew it_. Abe, I _told_ you. I told you. Tell me I told you.”

“Parker, what the fuck?” Flash said. “You’re—that’s—”

Peter clenched his jaw and flicked his eyes away for just a second to think, goddamnit, but froze.

The kid by the building was gone.

Gone, gone. Nowhere to be seen. And Peter was holding his gun.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

“Hi,” he gasped to the others. “Okay, sure. I’m Spiderman, I’ve been lying to everyone since we were 15, Flash, anything you ever did to me pales in comparison to the rest of my life, and I need you all to be _calm_ right now because I need to ditch this gun and find that kid in case he’s got another piece in his goddamned backpack. Are we clear?”

Shocked silence had never, in Peter’s whole superheroing career, been even a tiny bit helpful. People needed orders otherwise the shock paralyzed them.

“I’m Spiderman,” he repeated in his Spiderman tone. “And I need you guys to help me before all our kids’ hard work gets flushed down the shitter. Are you in?”

The gaping graduated to mouth flapping, which rapidly turned into head shaking and people getting back into the game.

Yes. Perfect.

“You’re—we are talking about this,” Abe threatened as the other two nodded with him. “This is literally the most insane thing I’ve ever heard and this is about to be the biggest mistake of my life, but, what do we do, then? Spiderman?”

Now that’s the spirit.

First thing’s first.

“We hide this gun,” Peter said.

 

 

Unfortunately, in the time it took to procure the gun, calm the people, and get his new accomplices on board, the exam room doors had found it in themselves to open and to release into the courtyard a flood of blazers of all shapes and colors.

And Peter was still over here holding an assault rifle.

“Dude!” Abe swore. “Hide it!”

Yes, brilliant idea. One problem.

“Where??” Peter snapped at him.

“A tree? I dunno? Where do bad guys hide guns?”

“I can’t—we gotta hide it so that that kid doesn’t find it,” Peter argued while MJ scanned the crowd for royal blue and eye-searing yellow. Damage control. Yes, thank you, girl.

“Okay, where’s that then?” Flash hissed. “You’re—Christ. You’re Spiderman. Where’s somewhere where only you can get it?”

Uh.

“Parker, come on, man. We don’t have time.”

UH.

“PARKER.”

“Flag pole?” Peter tried.

“Oh my god, he’s still an idiot,” Felicia whimpered. “Spiderman’s an idiot. Oh my god.”

“Uh, uh.” Peter was panicking now, he couldn’t panic. He didn’t have the mask right now. He had to be sneaky.

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

Where would the Widow hide an assault rifle? Be the Widow. Embody the Widow. Fellow spider and all that. Be the—

For fuck’s sake this was too hard, Peter wasn’t the Widow. He was a raging dumpster fire at best—

Wait.

“Yo, dumpster,” he snapped. “Find a dumpster.”

All his fellows’ heads went looking.

“Not a dumpster, compost heap? Will that work?” Felicia asked.

Aw, yeah. Perfect. Now it was just a matter of getting it through the crowd.

“What if the kid sees it?” Flash hissed, “He’ll just pick it back—”

Peter snapped the butt off the rifle and smiled.

“Or…we could do that?” Flash said.

Peter broke the longer half of the rifle into two and piled the three pieces together. Then he spotted an unattended blazer on the planter box next to them. He said a prayer for the kid who was gonna catch hell for losing it and nabbed it. He wrapped it around the three pieces and shoved it discreetly into Felicia’s arms.

“That’s now your baby,” he said. “Go stuff it under the compost heap. I’ll swing by during interviews and make sure it’s out of reach.”

Felicia gaped at him.

“Are you seri—”

“Spiderman,” Peter snapped. “I know what I’m doing.”

Felicia looked from him to the gun-child in her arms.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” she started chanting as she wove her way through the crowd.

Excellent.

Plan A, Part One, accomplished.

Plant A, Part Two in motion.

He turned to the others.

“We need to catch that kid,” he said.

 

 

MJ brought both troops of kids back over to their group with a look on her face that promised pain and eternal suffering. Peter wanted to apologize, but he had priorities right now and these involved finding the damn would-be shooter before they caused any alarm.

The Brooklyn kids had worked their asses off to get to this place, Peter would be damned if some shitty extremist brat was going to ruin it for them.

He convinced Flash and Abe that if they found the brat, he’d immobilize them and call the police. Really, he intended to immobilize said brat, enact some unusual, but terrifying punishment upon him, and leave him there to think about his life choices while the rest of the kids who’d worked hard got to finish out their competition in peace.

Then Peter would call the police.

Call him merciful.

Brilliant.

Or just Spiderman. That would work, too.

 

 

While MJ and Flash put on their happy-coach faces and pumped everyone up for interviews and speeches, Peter and Abe made like they were going to go fetch some drinks and snacks for the crowd. They headed towards the school building proper and bumped into Felicia, still chanting, on the way.

“It’s hidden,” she said stiffly.

“Perfect, thank you,” Peter told her before dragging Abe after him into the halls.

They were dead, the halls. Everyone was outside. This building wasn’t being used for the competition. Just for refreshments.

Peter got to work stretching out the Spidey Sense and rattling every door in the hallway for an open one.

If he was a kid who’d just been caught in the act of trying to shoot up a school, he’d go for a safe place to hide. Somewhere which he could, if caught, plausibly lie about having just walked into.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Abe asked with desperate hands. “If he’s in one of those, he’s just gonna shoot you.”

“Then he’ll shoot me,” Peter said. “Try the doors. If you find one that’s open, tell me. I’ll open it.”

“That does not solve our main problem here, Peter,” Abe emphasized. Peter sighed and pressed his forehead against the locked door he’d been yanking on.

“Abe,” he said calmly, “I have been shot more times than I can count. I’ll deal. Now,” he seized the door handle and jerked it down hard until it made a grinding sound. “Try all the doors.” He opened his newly unlocked door pointedly and checked inside.

He came out to Abe gawping at him.

“You’re like, actually the real deal,” he said.

Aigh.

“I’m the worst liar in all of New York, man; _yes,_ I’m for real. Doors.”

And with that Abe got to it.

 

 

The kid wasn’t in any of those classrooms. Nor in any of the supply rooms. Nor in any of the computer labs.

Peter was at his wits end here.

“What was he wearing?” Abe asked again.

“Green, he’s one of Delta High’s,” Peter growled for the third time.

“Delta High,” Abe mused as he watched Peter pop open an air vent. “Okay, Delta High. Wait, I saw them. They were at that park we stopped for lunch at.”

Goddamnit, Spidey Sense. Why couldn’t you fucking talk? That shit could have saved everyone a whole lot of trouble.

“One of their coaches has pink hair,” Abe remembered. “I mean neon pink. If we find her, maybe she might know where he’d hide?”

Or she’d be a supervillain with Peter’s luck, but sure, why not? Searching like this wasn’t getting them anywhere.

 

 

He and Abe crashed back into the others with a collection of soda cans only to be informed that all of the kids had gone into classrooms again for speech.

For fuck’s sake.

“Peter, can’t you sniff him out or something?” Felicia whispered. They were inside the building now, with the other coaches yet again.

“Do I look like Daredevil to you?” Peter snapped at her.

“I’ve seen that coach,” MJ piped up. “The one with the pink hair. She was back that way.”

She pointed back down the hall.

“But she’s not gonna talk to us about her kids, that’s weird,” she said.

Oho.

Well, that’s what you’d think, isn’t it?

 

 

Peter located this lovely pink-haired lady and shoved everyone behind him over into the lockers around the corner.

“Do not mess this up for me,” he made them all swear. He took the raised eyebrows and head shakes at face value and then reached up and fucked up his hair and dug out his glasses. He popped them on and cleared his throat.

Spidey mode, activated.

He sauntered out into the hallway and passed by this gal. He made sure she noticed him, dropped a pen, then collected it and carried on his way to the end of the hallway. He then paused and did an about face to make his way back.  

“Excuse me,” he said to this gal on the way back. She was all crouched over herself with a hand tucked over her lips. She was nervous, probably worrying for her kids inside the room in front of her.

“Excuse me,” he said again. This time she looked up at him.

“My name’s Matt Murdock and believe it or not, I’m recruiting for Rutgers,” he said charmingly, “Your kids seem very prepared, might I ask how you got all ten of them up to the same level?”

The lady blinked like she didn’t understand what he was saying. He gave her a smile and a moment to process.

“Oh, well. We did a lot of practices and inductive techniques,” she said. “But honestly they aren’t all at the same level, you know how it is. There’s always one or two that struggle.”

Uh-huh. Say more, darlin’. Tell me all about your struggles.

“Ah, yes. Well those ones always seem to have a lot going on,” Peter hummed. “Homelife and whatnot.”

“Yeah,” Pink sighed. She dropped her eyes. “I’ve got one I’m really worried about.”

Oh, _do_ tell.

“That’s hard,” Peter said. “You talk to his counselor?”

“Yeah,” Pink said, deflating even further. “She agrees he’s got some troubling behaviors, but there’s not much we can do. He gets good grades for the most part. Shows up to practice. He’s just got a lot of anger in him, you know? It worries me. He doesn’t get along with the other kids. Scares them.”

Yes, rightly so.

Peter sucked in a breath and settle down into a crouch next to Pink.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” he said. “You’re only his coach. There’s only so much you can do.”

Pink’s eyes got a little shiny.

“He came late today,” she said. “Didn’t want to ride with us. Drove his own car and met us for lunch and then here. I’m—is it fucked up that I’m worried? I’m like, I dunno. I’m trying to be positive for the other ones, but something’s just not right here. I just—I don’t know how to explain it.”

Yeah, for fucking real. That, my dear, is called a gut instinct.

“He presenting right now?” Peter asked lightly, gesturing to the door.

“Just left for the bathroom,” she sniffed.

Perfect.

“Hey,” he said, touching her shoulder and finally getting her eyes to meet his. “Everything is going to be alright. Trust me.”

She sniffed and scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, then gave him a watery smile.

“Yeah, why not?” she said.

He stood back up and gave her a cheesy finger gun on the way back down the hall which made her laugh. She gave him one back and he turned the corner.

“Bathroom,” he snapped immediately to the others. “Check all of them on this floor. _Now_. Before he moves.”

“Yo, who the hell was that back there?” Flash asked.

MJ groaned.

“That was Spiderman,” she sighed. “Incorrigible flirt.”

Peter gave her finger guns too before ducking down the adjacent hall.

 

 

He’d just checked his second bathroom when he was besieged by young ones. One second, he had his hand on the door, then next he was being kidnapped and spirited away back into the hall.

He jerked and went to tell them to get their hands off him, but found himself confronted with a small sea of blue—a puddle if you will, of anxiety.

“Peter,” Ganke said. “Peter, someone in here’s trying to shoot up the school.”

Ahaha.

What.

“There was a rifle outside,” Ernie whispered. Peter heard other speech doors opening and closing up and down the hallway.

“A what now?” he asked, desperately trying to contain himself. He hadn’t gone to check that Felicia had hidden the thing completely from view. At some point, the kids must have passed by it and, because they were Peter and MJ’s fucking proteges now, they’d must have seen something that had piqued their interest. As a group naturally. Because why not? Why fuckin’ not?

“A rifle,” Jasmin stage-whispered.

“Oh, right,” Peter creaked.

“Don’t worry, though,” Kailee piped up, “We hid it.”

You did _WHAT_?

Peter’s face snapped down to Miles’s unbidden and Miles immediately looked away.

For.

FUCK’S.

Sake.

“You—I—”

He needed a minute here. You know. To chase away the feelings of homicide.

“Where did you hide the rifle?” he said as flatly as he could manage so as not to tear Miles a new one in front of God and everyone in this hallway.

“Oh, Miles tied it to the flagpole,” Jun said. “It was really impressive.”

Oh God, Miles was turning into _him._

Honey, no. Save yourself.

“Which flagpole?” he asked a little desperately.

The whole group pointed out the window where, sure enough, swinging in the wind like the worst tetherball in human history, was the blazer-sack of rifle pieces, dangling from the edge of the DC flag.

Peter was going to cry. Miles refused to meet his eye, fully aware of the level of shit that this particular idea had been.

“Okay,” Peter said tightly. “I guess we’ll call the police then?”

His puddle, minus one, thought this was a very good idea indeed.

“I’m just gonna go do that,” Peter lied, edging back towards the bathroom. Miles suddenly went rigid and grabbed at him.

He pursed his lips and shook his head violently.

Peter didn’t understand.

No?

No, what?

Miles bared his teeth and winced. Then looked away.

It took Peter a second to understand.

But then it hit him like a load of bricks.

 

 

He stiffly herded his puddle back down the hall towards MJ and the others and, once he found them and they all collected themselves and tried to pretend they hadn’t been scouring the bathrooms of this floor like a load of creeps, he handed the kids off to MJ.

All except one.

He caught MJ’s eye and pointed down at Miles who gave a tiny, sheepish wave.

She gaped. Then made a threatening gesture at Peter. He held his hands up in the highest shrug he could make.

Like, girl. It wasn’t his fault. This is what happens when you put two Spideys together.

They were just efficient like that.

MJ made a series of unkind gestures promising future pain, then pasted on a smile and led the puddle back downstairs where people were getting ready for the SuperQuiz. As soon as they were gone, Peter latched a hand over Miles’s head.

“Where did you put him?” he demanded.

Miles shrunk back.

 

 

“Miles,” Peter said, pinching the space between his eyes.

“I panicked,” Miles blurted out.

The would-be shooter was out cold on the floor of the copy room. Miles had wrapped him in web to the point of immobility. His bag had been emptied, dumped out right next to his head, and bullets littered the floor.

Part of Peter wanted to congratulate Miles on a target well captured.

The other part of Peter wanted to tell him to just let Peter do this kind of thing. Miles was a kid. Still just a kid. And he had a Spidey with him; he didn’t have to be on full alert when there were two of them in one place.

“I felt him go past me in the bathroom and he was trying to draw that thing—” Miles waved at the pistol which had apparently fallen out of the backpack. “And I just—I dunno, Spidey. I just moved before thinking.”

“I know, I _know_ ,” Peter said into his hands. “I did the same thing—fuck. Did anyone see you?”

Miles looked contrite.

“I don’t think so?”

Well, that was better than nothing. Peter dropped his hands and heaved a sigh from the bottom of his lungs.

“The MST coaches saw me,” he admitted.

“Dude.”

“Fucking tell me about it.”

“Dude, that’s—that’s not good.”

“I _know_.”

Miles covered his mouth and thought.

“What do we do with him?” he finally asked.

Peter looked down at the body on the floor.

Well.

He had a thought.

But it was not kind, intelligent, necessary, or helpful.

 

 

About halfway through the SuperQuiz, someone called the cops. They graciously waited until the end of the quiz to evacuate the school. By then, at least, all the scores were in, so in the evacuation zone in the front of the building, awards were handed out.

The kids got second. And Peter was proud of them, really. They were so happy, it warmed his damn heart.

The kid he’d tied to the flagpole? Up there being circled by his own rifle pieces?

Not so much.

But hey, they can’t all be winners.

 

 

Once all the kids were knocked out on the way home, Peter stood up and picked up Miles from the back. He was displeased, but quickly realized what was going on and made the requisite plaintive sounds when Peter used him to demonstrate to Abe, Felicia, and Flash what would happen if they dared to speak of their run-in with Spiderman to any other human soul in existence.

“Dude, that’s—let him go,” Flash pleaded. “We get it.”

Peter sniffed and then did. Miles caught himself easily and hopped up and shook himself out. Then he ducked in under Peter’s arm and stared out at the other three. They recoiled a bit, unnerved by his sudden recovery.

“Oh, yeah,” Peter said. “This is Bitsy.”

Miles waved.

“He’s the bitty one. Black suit. He’s sturdy.”

Abe looked like he was going to pass out.

“Spidey threw me off the Empire State once,” Miles informed his horrified audience. “It’s okay, though. I lived.”

MJ held her face in her hands.

“Message received,” Felicia whimpered.

 

 


	14. don't sleep yet, not yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This motherfucker sniped two pigeons behind my back,” Angel gasped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character notes for this chapter:
> 
> Peter/Tats = Inimitable Spidey  
> Wade/WadeWilson = Inimitable Wade  
> Matt/Big Red/Daredevil = Inimitable Matt  
> Bitsy = Inimitable Miles  
> Itsy = ITSV Miles  
> GwenStacy = ITSV Gwen  
> Blondie = ITSV Peter  
> Little Red = ITSV Matt  
> Blue/Blue Wade = ITSV Wade  
> Big Peter/B Parker/B= ITSV Peter B  
> PParker/Agave = Andrew Garfield Spidey  
> Shortstack = In technicolor Peter

**Blondie:** someone shoot me now please

 **Itsy:** hi everyone!! Tats and Bitsy, we hope that everything went well for you and that you guys got some sleep yesterday!! but it’s time to rock n roll on our part

 **Blondie** : for real someone break my fucking arm I’ll pay you in cheetos or smth

 **Itsy:** Tats, how many of your team is coming, do you know? We’re just trying to figure out how many people we’re gonna need to bring on our end. I think we decided that since this is the last round we wanted as many as possible, are we still okay with that?

 **Tats:** that is a lot of words

 **Tats:** pls make less words brain is tired

 **Bitsy:** thanks we got 2nd!!

 **PParker:** OH MY GOD CONGRATULATIONS

 **GwenStacy:** That’s so great Bitsy, congrats!!

 **B Parker:** the fucks the matter with u blondie?

 **Blondie:** what isn’t wrong with me?

 **Itsy:** he’s literally fine, B, just ignore him

 **Tats:** are you sure man?

 **Blondie:** no

 **Itsy:** I’m sure. # of people who are coming, Tats?

 **Tats:** uuuuuuuuh

 **[Tats** has added **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** , **Daredevil, Dave, LittleSpidey, Louis,** and **Bitsy** to the chat]

 **Tats:** which of y’all are coming back to Chicago?

 **LittleSpidey:** dude you ARE alive. Why the hell haven’t you answered any of my texts??

 **Bitsy:** he’s been having floortime

 **Tats:** **❤** floortime ❤

 **LittleSpidey:** I thought you weren’t allowed to do that anymore

 **Tats:** mind your own fucking business and answer the posed question please ❤❤❤

 **B Parker:** i LOVE floortime

 **GwenStacy:** we know b

 **PParker:** oh my god floor time; it’s like shower time but with less crying

 **Blondie:** I am having floortime RIGHT NOW

 **Daredevil:** what time? apprentice wants to come. May send him in my place.

 **LittleSpidey:** WHAT

 **Dave:** is apprentice not still only one week out from a bullet wound?

 **Daredevil:** you make a strong point sir

 **PParker:** apprentice???

 **Tats:** I need a yes or no, Double D.

 **Daredevil:** fine yes

 **Tats:** Wade? You available still or do you have a job?

 **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** : how hot is it there

 **Tats:** forecast says 85

 **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** **:** red are you going

 **Daredevil:** unfortunately

 **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** : k I’m in.

 **Tats:** LS, you in?

 **LittleSpidey:** I mean yeah. It’s only 85 there that’s the dream rn

 **Tats:** louis?

 **Louis:** yes

 **Dave:** 👍

 **Tats:** Alright that’s all of us, then—unless you really are bringing Sam, DD. Are you?

 **[Daredevil** has added **Blindspot** to the chat. **]**

 **PParker:** oh my god that’s a great name

 **Blindspot:** LET ME OUT

 **Tats:**??!

 **Bitsy:** woah are you okay man?

 **Blindspot:** FUCK no I will not be drawn into this shit. I take it back LET ME OUT

 **Blondie:** now that’s a reaction I can get behind

 **Blindspot:** BOSS I AM VOMITING BLOOD

 **Daredevil:** oh he’s vomiting blood now is he

 **Daredevil** : funny how quickly that came on is it not

 **WadeWilson (´** **｡** **✪** **ω** **✪** **｡** **´)** : red what have you done to this boy?

 **Daredevil:** I have only ever given him what he wanted

 **Tats:** oh

 **Tats:** Sam its okay the physics are fine. I know they seem all wrong, but they’re more stable than you think.

 **Blindspot:** fuck you

 **Tats:** uh?

 **Daredevil:** tone.

 **Blindspot:** I’m destroying my phone before the rest of you destroy the space-time continuum. Peace, assholes. Hope you like it in string-theory hell.

 **Daredevil:** why don’t you put us down for seven, peter

 **PParker:** so that was amazing. Who is he and where can I get one?

 **Itsy:** alright, cool. So we’ll bring 7, too. We’ve got 4. Me, Peter, Little Red, and our DP. Are there any takers for the last three places?

 **Blondie:** 4 places

 **Itsy:** 3 places.

 **GwenStacy:** yeah I’ll take one. @PParker will too

 **PParker:** YO.

 **PParker:** I didn’t say that

 **GwenStacy:** you did. You’re coming. Deal with it. That leaves one more person, Itsy.

 **Blondie:** 2

 **Itsy:** 1\. Any takers?

 **Bitsy** : Are y’all okay?? Who are we listening to here?

 **Blondie:** me

 **Itsy:** I’m team lead, ignore him he’s being a jerk.

 **B Parker:** you want another wade or miles? Mine are driving me to drink at the moment

 **Shortstack:** I can come?

 **B Parker:** you’ve been stabbed. You’re done little man

 **Shortstack:** my red can come

 **B Parker:** you were stabbed together, you wanna keep going with this?

 **Shortstack:** yes

 **B Parker:** alright go on then

 **Blondie:** we actually need 2 people so if he wants to come that’s totally cool or if he wants to replace me on my team that’s cool too

 **B Parker:** fuck it I’ll come

 **Itsy:** YAY thanks B you’re my favorite Peter again.

 **Itsy:** alright cool, everyone’ll meet at the original meeting roof then? Everyone in suits, yeah?

 

 

Peter was exhausted. One day between the Acadec shit and this allegedly final showdown was not enough. He couldn’t even sleep all of the day before either. He’d had to work.

He swore sometimes that his staff were testing his emotional limits to see just how far they could go before they made him start crying in the middle of the breakroom.

Lovett had melted a table.

Wallace had created a possibly sentient polymer.

Alverez and Chao had slammed doors and drawers all day, hiding something that Peter was devastated to learn was, in fact, a stuffed toy llama.

It had a helmet.

And safety goggles.

It was absolutely a diversion from something horrendous happening in a room that Peter just hadn’t stumbled into yet.

He was so scared.

So alone.

So afraid.

“You look like shit,” Angel told him kindly when he flopped more than rolled up onto the meeting roof.

“Thanks for noticing,” he mumbled into the concrete.

He heard light footfalls and then a soft whoosh of air when Miles came over to sit down cross-legged next to his head.

“It’s okay, Spidey,” he said, “I’m tired, too.”

Bless this kid.

 

 

Wade woke Peter up by holding him upside-down by the ankle over the edge of the building  when he got there.

Matt helped by being a fucking dick and letting him do that without interruption for nearly a whole minute.

 

 

Once Peter had liberated himself and failed in an attempt to shove Wade off the side of the building in revenge, he noticed that Blondie was late.

“Dragging his feet probably,” Matt said with crossed arms. He’d rustled up an old red suit from the storage unit he and Fogs and Kirsten kept in the city. Peter hadn’t seen him in the horns in so long, he’d almost forgotten that he did actually wear them.

“Hello!”

They all jumped and found themselves facing…Itsy?

“Uh? Where’s—” Peter started.

“I’m here to pick you up for now,” Itsy said cheerfully.

 

 

This was bad.

“It’s not that bad,” Itsy observed.

Peter stared at him. The squinted at the knock-down-drag-out fistfight going on opposite them on the meeting roof in Chicago.

“I think they’re starting to like each other,” Itsy said brightly.

Little Red turned their way with his hands pressed together over the lower half of his face. He was now down a club. It had been taken and chucked right off the edge of the building while he himself had been caught and shoved back and told to keep the fuck out of the fight.

By _Blondie_. Who was dead set on breaking his knuckles against his opponent’s face.

To the opponent’s credit, he wasn’t getting very far with that goal.

“They’re at least talking to each other today,” Itsy noted as he watched Blondie get hauled up around the middle and slung backwards over the roof’s edge.

“This is talking?” Peter clarified.

“What in God’s name is happening?”

Ah. B was here now to join the rest of them in trying to make sense out of chaos.

“Oh, you know. Peter’s trying to break Wade’s back and failing as usual,” Itsy said.

Wade.                                                                                                                                        

Peter looked at Wade. He blinked his suit eyes and waved. He’d tucked Matt into an affectionate headlock at some point when no one had been watching the two of them, and Matt was demonstrating for Dave and Louis how to be a resigned recipient of these ministrations.

Peter thumbed back at him over his shoulder silently.

“No, our Wade,” Itsy said. He waved over at the man now with web on his face and chest and, well, everywhere really.

“That’s not Wade,” Little Spidey observed. “Wade’s got the whole red and black thing going on.”

Wade had finally noticed and become intrigued by the fight. Bitsy and Louis shuffled in front of him so that he couldn’t drag Matt over with him to investigate.

The other guy, the one who had since scraped web off his face and had turned his efforts towards holding Blondie over the city by his ankle (oh, hey. That was familiar) and shaking him like he was a pissed off opossum, indeed was not bedecked in red and black.

Nah, he’d gone for navy blue. The blue was complimented by the huge black rifle case he had slung over his shoulder and the brown leather shoulder holsters he’d strapped on, too.

Peter stumbled forward with a sudden weight on his shoulder.

“He’s not red, though,” a long, skinny Spiderman who was suddenly there said while shaking three clasped fingers at the blue Wade.

Peter almost took a step right so the guy crashed to the concrete, but Gwen’s white hood popped up at his other arm and he realized then that this new guy had to be the Agave Spidey.

“Dude, you got them to go through the window together?” Gwen asked Itsy.

“Something like that,” Itsy said.

“Props to you, Miles,” Gwen hummed. “I mean, at least they’re a pretty even match for each other.”

Why was no one explaining anything?

Peter needed explaining. He was tired. He was weak.

B saw his and the team’s confusion, thank Jesus.

“Blondie and Blue have been fighting to the death over Little Red’s affections,” he said.

Everyone stared at him.

Peter’s brain made a noise like tires getting stuck in mud on the side of the road.

“Sorry, _what_?” he asked on behalf of his team.

“Yeah,” B said. He waved at the chaos which had escalated to threatening. “They’re both—”

“Idiots,” Little Red interrupted on the actual verge of tears. “They are so stupid.”

Uh?

“Aren’t you with your Foggy?” Little Spidey asked.

Little Red made a soft moan, which could have been a sob, into his hands.

“We’re not committed,” he said miserably, “And I am a whore, so apparently this is divine retribution.”

Matt.

This was a problem for Matt.

Peter looked very purposefully at the guy. But he seemed to have decided that being slowly strangled by Wade’s massive forearm was his new lot in life. He didn’t notice everyone staring at him until Wade coughed politely. Only then did he make a sound like a cat.

For real, Double D?

Peter cleared his own throat harder and applied jerky gestures towards Little Red to illuminate the current situation. Matt’s mask stayed facing the wrong direction.

He was evidently not interested. Never to fear, though. He always had Wade.

“Red, the baby you has fucked the blue me over there and is now having regrets,” Wade summarized down at him.

“Oh,” Matt said. “Yeah, haven’t we all?”

He went back to staring off somewhere overhead, probably listening in on something happening at street-level.

“So that was helpful,” Agave observed.

Peter pinched the space between his eyes. He didn’t have time for this shit.

“HEY,” he snapped in the warring duo’s direction. He stomped over. The fighting ground to a halt. “You, let him go.” Peter got fingers around the blue Wade’s belt and yanked him back onto the roof proper. “You, stop being a dick.” He grabbed the front of Blondie’s suit and dragged him upright and out of the blue Wade’s grip. Blondie caught his feet under him in surprise.

Peter narrowed his suit eyes at both of them.

“I don’t care what beef y’all have with each other, alright? Get your shit together and let’s move out. You got a whole universe to yourselves to fight in and I got bed ready and waitin’ for the whole damn weekend and neither of y’all is gonna fuck this up for me, you hear?”

The blue Wade straightened his back. Blondie clenched and unclenched his fists.

“I can’t _hear you_ ,” Peter snarled.

Blondie caved first.

“Tats, this motherfucker is ruining Matt’s life and he doesn’t even—”

“Do I look like I care?” Peter asked him. “Look into my fucking eyes and tell me I care. Right now. Do it.”

Blondie didn’t want to.

Uh-huh.

Good.

“I’m glad we’re all on the same page,” Peter continued. “Now get your punk ass back over to your Miles—you too, Blue Crew. Who the hell are you?”

He glared at the Wade, waiting. The blue Wade didn’t move. Peter frowned.

“Hey,” Blondie growled over his shoulder, “At least answer the fucking question, you heathen.”

Blue turned his head just ever so slightly towards Blondie. Blondie mugged at him. Blue calmly gave his attention back to Peter.

“Master Seaman, Wade Wilson. Alias, Deadpool. Current occupation, mercenary.”

Woah.

Ew. Winter-soldier-y much.

“Right,” Peter said. “Excellent. I’m so happy for you. Can you stop fighting him for the next five hours?” He pointed at Blondie.

Blue processed this.

“Affirmative,” he said.

Ew.

Ew, ew, ew.

“Affirmative my ass,” Blondie snapped.

“Peter, can we not?” Little Red interrupted. “There are better things to fight about right now.”

“Better than your honor?” Blondie snapped.

Little Red touched his nose with the top of a clenched fist.

“I don’t have honor,” he enunciated carefully.

A pause.

“Well, you _could_ ,” Blondie burst out, flailing. “If you _wanted_ to.”

Little Red twisted his head to the side.

“You are so fucking stupid,” he whispered.

“I’m just saying, Matt. You could do better. Look at this lug—”

“You are so fucking stupid, I can’t believe how fucking stupid you are.”

“—set him next to a vending machine and you wouldn’t be able to pick the human one—”

“—I literally cannot believe that you exist in the world sometimes—”

“—he thinks that he can come in here, telling me how to live my damn life? Hell no, Terminator. Go die in a ditch, huh?”

“You are intensely unpleasant,” Blue informed Blondie, who reared back, ready to go all over again.

“ _You_ have the emotional capacity of a sandbag, and that’s an insult to sandbags,” he shot back.

“Oh my god,” Little Red moaned into his hands. Itsy looked up at him sympathetically.

“It’s okay, Matt, it’s not your fault they’re dumb,” he said, taking one of Little Red’s hands, “They’ll get over it in like, ten years or something, and then we’ll be an unstoppable team.”

Uh.

Sure thing, little buddy. Whatever you want.

“He’s kinda hot, though, you gotta admit, he’s kinda hot,” Agave pointed out to B.

And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 

 

Peter admired B.

Peter wanted to become B.

He wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to suffer all the shit that B had apparently endured to get to this level of professional efficiency, but you know what?

It might be worth it.

“Okay,” B said calmly, “Now that we are all on the same page and—try me, right now, Blondie, do it. Yeah, that’s what I thought—ready to go, why don’t we pick who’s going where? Since there’s 14 of us, we can send three people each way and have two people handling the streets. Or we can send four folks to two posts and three folks to the other two; there is not a better or worse here, there are just preferences. So, all in favor of two floaters in the street, raise your hands.”

No one lifted a finger.

“Pack animals, we are,” B observed, “Alright, two teams of four, two of three. I don’t trust any of you to sort it out among yourselves, so here’s what we’re doing. Big Red.”

Matt stood up straight for the first time that whole evening.

“Congratulations, you are now head of the Daredevil team. You, Little Red, and your pal there—what’s your name? Tom? Bob? Whoever—y’all are going to the south-most post. Red Wade.”

Wade seemed pleased to get a nickname for once.

“You take the kids,” B said. “Itsy, Bitsy, and Gwen. Central south-post for you.”

The kids were more than down with that. They all loved Wade for some unknowable reason.

The group reshuffled so as to give B a better idea of his remaining options.

“You two apparently can’t function together without supervision,” he said, pointing two fingers at Blondie who was glaring at Blue. “So Blue, you’re with Pink and Louis.”

Angel’s mask fell with her face and she pleaded silently at Peter for assistance. Louis’s eye twitched a bit.

Peter felt for them.

“Little Spidey’s in charge,” he blurted out.

Everyone looked at him. He cleared his throat.

“Little Spidey’s in charge,” he repeated again, this time pointedly at Blue.

This guy had problems. And a gun. Peter didn’t want him leading his copycats. At least not until he knew better what he was all about.

“Fine,” B said. “You hear that, navy-boy? Pink’s in charge. You follow her orders. Central north post.”

“Roger that,” Blue said immediately.

Angel rotated her head back towards Peter in horror.

“You’re gonna be great,” he promised her.

“I’m gonna die,” she whimpered.

“Alright, that leaves us Parkers for the northern-most post. We all good? Tonight’s the last night, folks. You’re going to have more coke than you know what to do with at the end of it. We’ve promised some of it to Gwen’s Murdock in return for him setting up this whole operation for us, but the rest of it, we’ve gotta drop off with the police. It’s a lot. We’ll meet back here at 0100 to pick a container and a station to leave it at, yes? In the meantime, place is scared stiff, damn near empty. We’re just making a statement now, so go out and be obnoxious. Territorial, whatever. Do some flips and shit. Find people’s lost cats or whatever. Mostly, just be sure to let people know we’re here and we’re watching. Tats, you said the Hawkeyes are still in the area?”

Oh.

Yeah, they were.

“Great, get ahold of them. There is a set of Avengers in this area. We’ll make a show of handing things over to them at the end of the night and then we can get the fuck out of this godforsaken city for good. Any question?”

Yeah, how long would it be before Peter developed the kind of terrifying commanding tone that B had used back there to break Blondie and Blue up with?

Was it like, a thing he could practice, or was it a waiting game?

Agave shot his hand up in the air. B sighed.

“Yes, pineapple-child,” he said.

“Hypothetically, could we leave early?” Agave asked. B stared.

“You got a date?” he asked.

“Well, kind of.”

“Is it a human you have a date with?”

Agave made a thinking face.

“Then no,” B said, “Alright, team break. Get the fuck out of here until one.”

 

 

Getting to the north of the city was just a matter of swinging. Well, it should have been. Blondie’s simmering rage made it seem more like a slog than a swing. Peter tried not to focus on him too much; he watched Agave instead.

Agave looked like what Peter had looked like until he turned about twenty. Taller, sure. Broader, yes. But the guy was one long, fluid arch. like a trapeze artist or contortionist. Peter, if he’d wanted to, could probably have wrapped his fingers around the guy’s waist and touched them together with only a small squeeze.  

He had half a mind to ask him if his ribs were like a cat’s and flexible.

But that would be rude, and May would have recoiled in horror if he did, so he did not.

Agave, however, had no such boundaries.

“Dude,” he drawled in a high baritone at Blondie’s tense neck, “What’s your deal with the Wade-ling, huh?”

Blondie refused to engage.

“Duuuuude.”

“Dude, yourself,” Blondie snapped.

Agave did not take the hint.

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuude. Dude. Dude.”

“Man, shut the fuck up—"

“It would be a shame if I had to kill both of you,” B called back from up ahead.

Peter felt a little proud of himself that he was the best behaved Spidey of this team.

Blondie sent a nasty look Agave’s way but shut his mouth and pushed his feet high up into his next swing to get ahead of them. Agave let him. He watched him take off ahead and kept his own pace steady.

Agave didn’t so much swing as he let the web carry him up to the peaks of his arcs. He seemed to give everything over to gravity in those moments. His limbs relaxed and tumbled over each other in the air before he sent out another line. It was captivating to watch. Graceful and easy. The guy seemed almost like he was floating.

“How do you do that?” Peter asked him.

Agave perked up at having been noticed.

“Do what?”

“That.” Peter waved to his languid free arm.

“Oh,” Agave said. “It’s just how I learned do it, I guess. Gwen asked me the same thing.”

Gwen was grace weaponized. Peter could see why she’d be interested.

“Does it feel nice?” Peter asked.

“Mmm. Yeah. Feels right. I spend a lot of time in the air,” Agave said almost a little sadly.

Huh.

Maybe that languid exterior wasn’t all there was to him.

 

 

B landed first and waited for the rest of them on top of the northern delivery point’s roof. Now that he didn’t have an audience of young ‘uns he felt like he had to perform to, he slipped back into his almost lazy persona and was fine with the others coordinating the first half of their evening.

He and Agave were a lot alike, Peter saw now. Except that Agave had to be somewhere between five and eight years younger and his chill was a little less natural.

Blondie was still stiff as a board.

“We go in, check on the people, get out, and split off?” Blondie offered the group.

“You wanna split for sure?” Peter asked.

He got only unmoving white eyes in return.

Ah.

Yeah, okay. Blondie wanted some time alone.

“Okay, sounds fine with me,” Peter said.

“Cool. Shall we?” B asked.

Yes, yes, we shall.

 

 

The guys working the post recognized B and asked him if he knew where the boss was. The boss being Murderdock. B told them that he’d lost interest in the place and kindly gave the men and couple of gals the option of working for the rest of the night or taking off right then.

He thanked them for their work and held himself such that the dismissal was gentle and people took the news of their ending jobs with helpless shrugs.

This was the way of things in trafficking. People came and went into jobs all the time.

“Stay for another half an hour,” B directed them.

He took Peter by the shoulder to the back room of the place. There was an ancient oven and stove in there; it must have been a breakroom at some point when the building had been functional.

B opened the oven and had Peter pulled out the stacks of money in there with him.

They divided them up into 24 smaller stacks; 15 would go to the guys working on staff. The remaining 9 would go to the homes of those who had worked other shifts.

“It’s not like we need it,” B hummed as they counted. “And what a lot of these folks really need is a boost to help them get out of whatever slump they’ve gotten into.”

It would be their task when they were done securing the building to deliver the 9 remaining payments to their rightful owners. They could each take two and make a show of themselves on the way to dropping them off.

 

 

They took note of the coke supply. Then handed off the stacks to the waiting hands and bid them good night for the last time. While Peter texted the others to do the same with their posts, the other Peters hunted down addresses for the nine remaining workers and secured the building with web so that no one could get in before they could clear the drugs out.

 

 

Peter was flagging by 12:30 with only one stack of money left in his suit. He wasn’t going to last the night like this. He needed a monster or a coffee or something.

He dropped down onto a roof and dug out his phone for a quick google-maps session and saw something move out of the corner of his eye. The spidey sense didn’t flare. He went back to his phone.

“Man, remind me never to come back here,” Agave said.

“Will do,” Peter said.

“I’m dyin’.”

“Me, too,” Peter hummed. “Locating caffeine at the minute.”

“Mm. Hey, for real, what’s the blond guy’s problem with that Wade?”

Peter looked over his shoulder. Agave was surveying the skyline. His suit eyes were shinier than any of those on Peter’s team.

“You were there,” Peter said. “Guy’s pissed that Mr. Blue Man Group is fucking his friend.”

Agave snorted.

“Yeah, I got that. But like, why does it even matter to him? They’re just friends.”  

Mmm. Not if Peter was reading this right.

“Pretty sure they’re more than friends,” he said at his phone. There was a convenience store about four blocks ahead which would probably have energy drinks.

“Oh? For real? A Spidey and Daredevil? That’s weird.”

Was it?

“Well, yeah. I mean. At least my DD is like—how do I put this nicely— _painfully_ straight. A womanizer, even. Man can’t see a damn thing, but he’s got a sixth sense for beautiful women.”

Yeah, Matt could be like that sometimes. But he was more of a flirt than anything else these days. Back when Peter had been young, before Matt and Foggy had become Matt _and_ Foggy, there had been no shortage of guys and gals interested in Daredevil’s attention; and boy had Daredevil been interested in theirs.

Now, Peter knew that Matt had been loose with his body and charm because he’d been profoundly emotionally insecure at that time.

Matt had scars on his heart from a lifetime of people shoving him away when he reached out to them or  leaving him altogether when he got to be ‘too much’ for them to handle.

His way of coping with that was two-fold; first, he almost never opened up enough to people for them to know him in any real way, and second, he used people and let people use him with such frequency that they didn’t have the chance to leave any lasting damage. That put him in control of things. He was the one who got to leave, now.

Peter wouldn’t be surprised if Little Red was like that at the moment. That was probably what was pissing Blondie off; he knew where this behavior was coming from and because he couldn’t find it in himself to blame Little Red for his vulnerability, he’d decided to blame Blue for taking advantage of it.

It made sense.

“Blondie’s married,” Peter said. “But I think he’s still got feelings for his DD.”

It was understandable.

“Then he shouldn’t be married,” Agave said.

Woah.

Peter dropped his phone to his side.

“Sorry, what?” he asked.

Agave looked at him without moving his head.

“I said, if he’s still got feelings for someone else, then he shouldn’t be married. That’s not fair to his partner.”

Uh…right.

Right.

Right?

“Hey, sorry,” Peter blurted out in the quiet, “I know it’s not my business, but like—are you bi or queer or something?”

“Do I look straight, man?”

Peter sucked in a breath. Just making sure.

“B’s married,” he pointed out quietly.

“Yeah, and?”

“B’s in love with someone else, too,” Peter said. “But he’s married.”

Agave said nothing. Then shook his head.

Peter’s heart sped up a little. He shouldn’t be getting defensive, he told himself. It wasn’t any of his business. It wasn’t—

“Blondie’s poly, you know,” Peter’s mouth blurted out without consulting him at all.

“What?” Agave lifted his head.

“Poly,” Peter said tightly.

Great.

Perfect.

Yeah, apparently he was digging this hole.

“Like, polyamorous?” Agave clarified.

“Yep,” Peter squeaked.

A silence dragged out between them.

“Are…you poly?” Agave asked nervously.

“Yep.”

Great work, Parkers. Great work all around. You both went and stirred this fucking pot, didn’t you? Just had to make things awkward.

“Oh,” Agave said quietly. “Uh. So is B also…?” he trailed off.

“I think _you_ might be the odd man out here,” Peter admitted.

Agave’s suit eyes gave nothing away.

“Well fuck,” he finally said, at length.

Yeah.

“Well. Fuck.”

Yeah. Sorry, man.

“So he’s in love with Little Red still,” Agave said, refocused now.

“Pretty sure,” Peter said.

“But he’s married and he—”

“Probably feels hella guilt for having picked one and not the other.”

“So when Red moved on to Wade—”

“He got jealous. Yeah. Probably. ‘Cause, you know, I don’t know if they properly broke up before all that.”

Another silence stretched out before them.

“Am _I_ poly?” Agave asked Peter.

“Dude.”

“I’m just askin’. I mean, what if I am and I’m repressing it?”

“Then stop? Or don’t? I don’t know your life.”

 Peter no longer needed caffeine. The awkwardness of this conversation would sustain him for _years_ to come, he was sure.

Agave held a hand firmly over his mouth, thinking. When he snapped back in Peter’s direction, the movement felt like a threat. Peter winced. The spidey sense did, too.

Oh, god. Man, don’t do this. Whatever you’re gonna say, just spare us both.

“Right, so I just started fucking my Wade—”

“Why’re you two lollygaggin’?”

Thank everyone and thing that was holy.

“I feel sick,” Peter told B as pitifully as he possibly could when the guy stood up out of his landing crouch. B withdrew slightly in concern, then came over to assess the situation.

“What kind of sick?” he asked.

Anxiety-sick. Second-hand embarrassment sick.

I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-this-anymore-and-this-man-is-an-overshare-er sick.

B peeled off his mask and gestured for Peter to do the same. He followed the command and let B’s light brown eyes survey his face.

“Yeah, kid. You’re looking a little pale there; you still got a wad? Who’s it for? I’ll take it; we’re almost at the meeting time, so why don’t you head back?”

A splendid idea, sir. A fantastic idea. The best idea that anyone had had all night long.

“Oh, I’ll go with him,” Agave said. “I’m outta money, too.”

NO.

Peter maybe grabbed B’s sleeve a smidge more desperately than intended. B was surprised. He gave Peter strong, furrowed eyebrows. Peter flicked his eyes back towards Agave.

“Ah,” B said. He shook Peter off. “Pineapple, you blabbering on again? Listen, this guy’s Wade half-raised him. You’re creepin’ him the fuck out. He don’t need to hear about your kinky sex life.”

“WHAT.”

A hole. A hole. A hole.

Peter needed a hole.

Six by three would be great, but he was willing to compromise for a six by two or even a really fucking deep three by three. In fact, anything he could throw himself into to be buried in right now would be _beautiful_.

“OH MY GOD. Your Wade’s your _dad?_ ” Agave gasped.

No, not dad. More like weird uncle-brother-cousin-mentor. It was all very confusing, Peter never wanted to talk about it ever.

“You’re fucking your _dad_?”

“WHAT THE FUCK, NO,” Peter roared before he could stop himself.

“Oh my god,” Agave whimpered.

“Alright,” B said over both of them. “You two are done. Meeting roof.”

 

 

Fuck this. Fuck everyone, Peter was traumatized. He wanted to go home. Chicago was a place of nightmares. He didn’t deserve this shit any more.

 

 

“Heya Pete.”

Double D was safe. Peter crammed himself under his wing—arm, whatever.

“Woah, kiddo. You alright?”

No. He _traumatized_. Was anyone listening anymore?

“Easy there. You’re too big for that, Peter. Come here.”

Matt sat up and shifted so Peter could glue himself against his side and hide in the hollow he made for himself between his shoulders and knees.

“Everyone needs to stop fucking Wade,” Peter grumbled into the hollow. Dave choked and started coughing in earnest. Matt paused in surprise and then laughed.

“Amen to that, brother,” he said. “That’s the start of all bad decisions."

Little Red sat across from them with his cheek laid across his knees and his arms tucked between the tops of them and his chest.

“He’s nicer than he seems,” he sighed.

Matt hummed.

“He’s good with Miles at least,” Little Red finally said.

Well, you know what? There was that.

 

 

The man himself—rather, the red version--appeared shortly thereafter with three far-too-riled-up kids cheering all around him.

Peter already hated whatever they’d done.

“Spidey!”

No, don’t tell me.

“Spidey!!”

“He’s havin’ a rough night,” Matt told Miles for him. “Here, tell me of your tales, small one.”

Miles loved Matt. He’d trade Peter for Matt any day of the week and so he threw himself down to press into Matt’s other side to recount whatever horrors Wade had put him through.

“We picked up twenty needles,” Miles told Matt excitedly.

Peter felt Matt’s flinch. Miles must have too.

“Don’t worry, Wade picked ‘em up. It was just our job to find him. And since we got more than fifteen, Wade said he’ll take us for floats.”

Wade. Wade. Wade.

Not the time or the task for the children, Wade.

Peter stared at Wade’s massive shoulders as he spoke to the newly arrived B. He held out a plastic bag to B which he started to take and then jerked violently away from.

“Oh _hell no_ ,” he said loud enough for Peter to hear it. “Where the fuck are the kids?”

He caught sight of them and hurried over with Blondie right on his heels.

“Hands out,” B ordered everyone in the circle. The kids didn’t get it.

“Hands out,” Matt re-ordered.

Itsy and Bitsy exchanged expressions and then dutifully held out their hands. Gwen followed suit at Little Red’s nudging.

“Suits off,” B further commanded.

“What, why?”

“B, no.”

“B, we’re fine—”

“OFF.”

Mass grumbling occurred and Peter had never been so relieved for such a distraction.

 

 

The kids were fine. No one had gotten stuck with anything. B dragged all three in their full suits into a liquor store and argued with the guy over the counter in such a strong accent that he eventually relented and let the kids wash their hands in his store’s bathroom. B marched them all back and severely curtailed their participation in phase two of the night. He put limits on Wade’s participation, too.

Wade’s new job was sitting on his fucking hands and not being allowed to babysit ever again.

Matt’s new job was to be a reluctant, though protective advocate for the minors in the group, at least until the end of the night.

Angel and Louis came back in the middle of the new designations. Angel had Blue’s hand held firmly in hers.

“This motherfucker sniped two pigeons behind my back,” she gasped.

“Horrible animals,” Blue said with no inflection or remorse.

 

 

Blue’s rifle was confiscated. He was made to sit next to Wade on his hands. It was the first time he showed actual emotion all night and it was pouting.

Peter was done. So, so, _so_ done. He hung his head on Matt’s shoulder and Matt let him. He even dragged his fingers comfortingly through Peter’s hair to hold back the anxiety that was threatening to heat Peter’s throat and chest.

The new task was finding a container large enough to dump all their coke into. The next job was to hand it over to the police, but yeah no.

Peter had had enough. The last two weeks had been directly from hell.

He’d been harassed. He’d been assaulted. Insulted. Audited. Dragged through the mud. Dragged through DC. Chased through Chinatown. He’d received crazy mail. He’d endured Matt’s mom. And the wedding. And the fucking heat wave that was just now starting to slacken its hold on the Northeast.

 And more than anything right now, he just wanted to go home.

He wanted to sleep.

He wanted everyone to be in the right and proper dimensions with zero drama—or at least drama which did not directly involve him.

He wanted to wake up in the morning and go to May’s house and have tea and talk about how exhausted he was so that she could tell him that he was doing a great job holding himself up.

That’s what he wanted.

“Just a little longer, Spidey,” Matt assured him.

 

 

Angel was the one who came up with the best solution.

“Dumpster,” she said over the others’ extensive humming and hawing.

“Dumpster,” she said when the problem of moving the coke around arose.

“Dumpster,” she emphasized when the issue of putting people off the scent came up.

“Put it in a fucking dumpster,” Peter snapped at the others at a lull in the talking.

Everyone shut up for a second and must have looked at each or something, Peter didn’t know. He’d passed Done fifteen minutes ago and was careening towards Bad Team Player.

Matt was amused, even if no one else was.

“A dumpster’ll be perfect,” he said. “Barton wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

 

Clint almost cried when, at dawn’s early light, he was roused from his shitty Airbnb and presented with four dumpsters filled to max capacity with the majority of the city’s cocaine supply.

Kate gaped at them. Then at Peter who was pretty sure he’d turned into a storm at some point during the night, but no longer found himself capable of expressing human emotions. Blondie kept close and kept rubbing his back.

Somehow, the proximity of this other, friendly-again Peter was comforting. In the absence of Matt, who was busy edging away from Barton’s urge for a hug, Blondie was possibly the only thing keep Peter from collapsing where he stood.

“I’m so tired,” he told Blondie again, just as emptily as the fifty times he’d said it since 2am.

“I know, buddy,” Blondie said sympathetically. “Almost done.”

The kids were all passed out back on the meeting roof. They’d been done by 4. They’d had no chance. Angel and Louis were keeping an eye on them and trying very hard not to drift off themselves.

“Blondie, I’m so tired,” Peter almost cried, when Matt finally stepped back out of Clint’s range.

It was the first signal that the ordeal was coming to a close.

“I know, man. You’re gonna make it,” Blondie said.

Agave watched this with a raised eyebrow.

He’d woken folks up out of their dazes at 3 by taking off his mask and shocking the shit out of everyone loading the dumpsters.

Man looked like a cockatoo. He had some serious hair and a thin square face. When Blondie had called him Agave, he’d been being kind.

“Dude, what do you do for a living?” he asked Peter. “Like, it’s not even that early.”

Fuck him.

“He works for a lab,” Blondie explained.

“What, a 9 to 5 kind of thing?”

Fuck him. Fuck everyone.

“He’s a scientist, man. We can’t all be photographers.”

“We can, though. You gotta fight the man, man. Hey, Tats. You can’t become a cog in the—”

Yes, yes, fuck off, please.

“Well, then,” Agave huffed. “Be that way.”

“Alright, kids,” Wade announced while Matt suffered Clint’s inevitable hug. “That’s us, done. Pack it up, we’re moving out.”

He put his hands on Blue’s shoulders to march him back the other way.

 

 

B took him home. He didn’t have to. Peter would have found his way back eventually.

“Sure, you would have, pal,” B said sarcastically as he sat Peter on his bed.

“I _would_ ,” Peter groused.

B pushed him so that he fell back and groaned up at the ceiling. He left the room to go get something—maybe water or pills—Peter’s brain was too tired to decide what exactly.

It buzzed, crackled, and hummed in the quiet.

“Hey, Big Peter?” he eventually called.

“Hm?”

“Does it ever get easier?”

B said nothing and then chuckled lowly. He came back into the room and set a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge on Peter’s bedside table, then came over to help Peter wrangle himself out of his suit.

“Nothing gets easier, honey,” he finally said, scooping Peter’s legs up off the floor and dumping them on the bed with him. “You just get used to it. Sleep. You made it, kiddo. Good work.”

Good work.

Yeah.

Okay, he’d take the compliment. He was allowed to have one every so often.

 

 

He woke up to his phone buzzing.

It was nearly 5pm.

There were no messages from any Spidermen. Just MJ and Ned trying to get him to come have a final dinner with the Daredevil folks before they left the next morning.

May had messaged him asking how he’d gotten to Chicago last night and where he’d gotten all those people who’d helped him out in the news footage.

She still hadn’t seen any of the others in their suits.

He texted her back asking if she’d be around that night for a chat. Maybe frozen yogurt.

He’d missed her.

 

 

 **MP:** of course honey, I love you too. Hey, don’t work too hard, you know. You’re only one person, Peter. See you at 8?

 **PP:** yeah, you’re right. See you then.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we are DONE with this one. 
> 
> Hallelujah and blessed be. There were so many strands happening for a second there that I was scared there'd be no end in sight! Apologies for the time it took to write the last part of this piece. I've been working on the last chapter of my doctoral dissertation at the same time which has been extremely stressful. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this work! Your support is so appreciated and your comments really make my day. 
> 
> As always, if you want to chat more about this piece or have any questions, you are welcome to send me an ask at **https://deniigi.tumblr.com/** or if you want to read existing asks on this verse, you can check out my ask tag **https://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/fic** or my Inimitable tag on tumblr **https://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/inimitable%20verse**
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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